This paper studies the influence of information on entry choices in a competition with a controlled laboratory experiment. We investigate whether information provision attracts mainly high productivity individuals and reduces competition failure, where competition failure occurs when a subject...

We develop a model of strategic contractual incompleteness that identifies conditions under which principals might omit even costlessly verifiable terms. We then use experiments to test comparative statics predictions of the model. While it is well known that verifiability imperfections can...

Many households have insufficient savings to handle moderate and routine consumption shocks. Many of these financially fragile households also have the highest lottery expenditures as a proportion of income. This combination suggests that Prize-Linked Savings (PLS) accounts, that combine...

This paper investigates the effect of different communication channels on promise-making and promise-keeping in a helping situation. Four treatments differ with respect to the communication channel employed to solicit unincentivized cooperation, i.e., face-to-face, phone call and two different...

We use economic experiments to examine the nature of relational trading under a menu of incomplete contracts ranging from the repeat purchase mechanism of Klein and Leffler (1981) to highly incomplete contracts that are completely unenforceable by third-parties. Our results suggest that, with...

In order to address the impact of regulation on ethical concerns of consumers, we study the effect of a minimum wage. In our experimental market, consumers have monopsony power, firms engage in Bertrand competition, and workers are passive recipients of a wage payment. Two treatments are...

The paper provides evidence that happiness raises productivity. In Experiment 1, a randomized trial is designed. Some subjects have their happiness levels increased, while those in a control group do not. Treated subjects have 12% greater productivity in a paid piece-rate Niederle-Vesterlund...

We live in a high-divorce age. It is now common for university faculty to have students who are touched by a recent divorce. It is likely that parents themselves worry about effects on their children. Yet there has been almost no formal research into the important issue of how recent...

Value Surveys may reveal well-behaved societies by the statistical treatment of the agents’ declarations of compliance with social values. Similarly, the results of experiments conducted on games with conflict of interest trace back to two important primitives of social capital – trust and...

The public finance literature demonstrates the equivalence between consumption and labor-income (wage) taxes. We introduce an experimental paradigm in which individuals make real labor-leisure choices and spend their earned income on real goods. We use this paradigm to test whether a...