We show that if agents are risk neutral, prizes outperform wages if and only if there is sufficient pride and envy relative to the noisiness of performance. If agents are risk averse, prizes are a necessary supplement to wages (as bonuses).

We show that if agents are risk neutral, prizes outperform wages when there is sufficient pride and envy relative to the noisiness of performance. If agents are risk averse, prizes are a necessary supplement to wages (as bonuses).

We study optimal contracting in team settings, featuring stylized aspects of production environments with complex tasks. Agents have many opportunities to shirk, task-level monitoring is needed to provide useful incentives, and because it is difficult to write individual performance into formal...

We investigate why people keep their promises in the absence of external enforcement mechanisms and reputational effects. In a controlled laboratory experiment we show that exogenous variation of second-order expectations (promisors' expectations about promisees' expectations that the promise...

It is not infrequent to see studies of imperfect competition or of industrial organization rest upon questionable foundations such as the hypothesis that inverse market demand is, whenever it is positive, concave or even linear. Assumptions of this sort are not robust (i.e., "additive") in the...

Why did evolution not give us a utility function that is offspring alone? Why do we care intrinsically about other outcomes, such as food, and what determines the intensity of such preferences? A common view is that such other outcomes enhance fitness and the intensity of our preference for a...

Why did evolution not give us a utility function that is offspring alone? Why do we care intrinsically about other outcomes, food, for example, and what determines the intensity of such preferences? A common view is that such other outcomes enhance fitness and the intensity of our preference for...

This paper provides an evolutionary foundation for our capacity to attribute preferences to others. This ability is intrinsic to game theory, and is a key component of "Theory of Mind", perhaps the capstone of social cognition. We argue here that this component of theory of mind allows organisms...

This paper investigates the evolutionary foundation for our capacity to attribute preferences to others. This ability is intrinsic to game theory, and is a key component of "Theory of Mind," perhaps the capstone of social cognition. We argue here that this component of theory of mind allows...