One lingering puzzle is why voluntary contributions to public goods decline over time in experimental and real-world settings. We show that the decline of cooperation is driven by individual preferences for imperfect conditional cooperation. Many people's desire to contribute less than others,...

This paper investigates whether there is a link between cognitive ability, risk aversion, and impatience, using a representative sample of roughly 1,000 German adults. Subjects participate in choice experiments with monetary incentives measuring risk aversion, and impatience over an annual...

We analyze the consequences of control on motivation in an experimental principalagent game, where the principal can control the agent by implementing a minimum performance requirement before the agent chooses a productive activity. Our results show that control entails hidden costs since most...

A key open question for theories of reference-dependent preferences is: what determines the reference point? One candidate is expectations: what people expect could affect how they feel about what actually occurs. In a real-effort experiment, we manipulate the rational expectations of subjects...

This paper studies the impact of incentives on worker self-selection in a controlled laboratory experiment. Subjects face the choice between a fixed and a variable payment scheme. Depending on the treatment, the variable payment is a piece rate, a tournament, or a revenue-sharing scheme. We find...

We study subgame-perfect implementation (SPI) mechanisms that have been proposed as a solution to incomplete contracting problems. We show that these mechanisms, which are based on off-equilibrium arbitration clauses that impose large fines for lying and the inappropriate use of arbitration,...

Countercyclical risk aversion can explain major puzzles such as the high volatility of asset prices. Evidence for its existence is, however, scarce because of the host of factors that simultaneously change during financial cycles. We circumvent these problems by priming financial professionals...

The data in Fehr and Tyran (FT, 2001) and Luba Petersen and Abel Winn (PW,2013) show that money illusion plays an important role in nominal price adjustment after a fully anticipated negative monetary shock. Money Illusion affects subjects' expectations, and causes pronounced nominal inertia...