This paper presents new evidence on the distribution of risk attitudes in the population, using a novel set of survey questions and a representative sample of roughly 22,000 individuals living in Germany. Using a question that asks about willingness to take risks in general, on an 11-point...

Single-sex classes within coeducational environments are likely to modify students' risk-taking attitudes in economically important ways. To test this, we designed a controlled experiment using first year college students who made choices over real-stakes lotteries at two distinct dates....

We investigate a novel dynamic choice problem in an experiment where emotions are measured through self-reports. The choice problem concerns the investment of an amount of money in a safe option and a risky option when there is a 'global risk' of losing all earnings, from both options, including...

International surveys reveal wide differences between the views held in different countries concerning the causes of wealth or poverty and the extent to which people are responsible for their own fate. At the same time, social ethnographies and experiments by psychologists demonstrate...

This Paper shows that over monitoring a partner in the initial phase of a relationship may not be optimal if the goal is to determine loyalty and if the cost of ending the relationship increases over time. This intuition is simple: by monitoring too much we lose the opportunity to learn how the...

I study the constrained efficient allocations of a simple model of risk sharing and capital flows across countries assuming that each country cannot commit to fully repay its contract obligations. In the model, the degree of risk sharing and the amount of investment are interdependent. It is...

We study a class of representation mechanisms, based on reports made by a random subset of agents, called representatives, in a collective choice problem with quasi-linear utilities. We do not assume the existence of a common prior probability describing the distribution of preference types. In...

This paper examines the role of liability for past environmental contamination in the privatization processes of Central and Eastern Europe. The theoretical section establishes a link between a risk-averse investor’s amount of information regarding the extent of past environmental...

This Paper proposes a theory of the optimal organization of delegated expertise. For incentive purposes, a principal should reward an expert when their recommendation is confirmed either by the facts or by other experts’ recommendations. With a single expert, we show that the agency costs of...

This paper analyzes a model of capacity choice followed by price competition under demand uncertainty. Under various assumptions regarding the nature and timing of demand realizations, we obtain general predictions concerning the role of demand uncertainty on equilibrium outcomes. We show that...