Round numbers affect behavior in various domains, e.g., as prominent thresholds or focal points in bargaining. In line with earlier findings, residential real estate transactions in Germany cluster at round-number prices, but there are also interesting (presumably cultural) differences. We...

An important aspect in determining the effectiveness of gift exchange relations in labor markets is the ability of the worker to "repay the gift" to the employer. To test this hypothesis, we conduct a real effort laboratory experiment where we vary the wage and the effect of the worker's effort...

To investigate the external validity of laboratory results, we combine a public good experiment with three treatments in a field experiment. One treatment offers the opportunity to free-ride, the other two are placebo treatments. We compare results within subjects. In the free-riding treatment,...

We conduct a field experiment where we vary both the presence of a gift exchange wage and the effect of the worker's effort on the manager's payoff. The results indicate a strong complementarity between the initial wage gift and the agent's ability to "repay the gift". We collect information on...

There is ample empirical evidence indicating that a substantial fraction of the population exhibits social preferences. Recent work also shows that social preferences influence the effectiveness of incentives in labor relations. Hence when making contracting decisions, employers should take into...

We provide evidence that German savings banks - where local politicians are by law involved in their management - systematically adjust lending policies in response to local electoral cycles. The different timing of county elections across states and the existence of a control group of...

Incentive schemes affect performance and priorities of agents but, in reality, they can be complicated even for simple tasks. We analyze the effects of the salience of incentives in a team production setting where the principal has an interest in quantity and quality of output. We use data from...

The corporate finance literature documents that managers tend to overinvest into physical assets. A number of theoretical contributions have aimed to explain this stylized fact, most of them focussing on a fundamental agency problem between shareholders and managers. The present paper shows that...

We provide an overview over different literature streams that aim at explaining the origin of persistent productivity differences across organizations by variation in the use of management practices. We focus on human resource management (HRM) practices, document gaps in the literature, and show...

Recent laboratory evidence suggests that social preferences may affect contractual outcomes under moral hazard. In accordance with previous research, this paper uses written personality tests for job candidates as a proxy for whether firms care about personality traits of employees, in...