We utilize a laboratory experiment to compare effort provision under optimal tournament contracts with different distributions of prizes which motivate agents to compete to be first, avoid being last, or both. We find that the combined tournament contract incorporating both incentives at the top...

Many tournaments are plagued by sabotage among competitors. Typically, sabotage is welfare-reducing, but from an individual's perspective an attractive alternative to exerting positive effort. Yet, given its illegal and often immoral nature, sabotage is typically hidden, making it difficult to...

Many tournaments are plagued by sabotage among competitors. Typically, sabotage is welfare-reducing, but from an individual's perspective an attractive alternative to exerting positive effort. Yet, given its illegal and often immoral nature, sabotage is typically hidden, making it difficult to...

Efficient coordination is a major source of efficiency gains. We study in an experimental coordination game with 718 children and teenagers, aged 9 to 18 years, the strategies played in pre-adulthood. We find no robust age effects in the aggregate, but see that smaller group sizes and larger...

In markets with asymmetric information between sellers and buyers, feedback mechanisms are important to increase market efficiency and reduce the informational disadvantage of buyers. Feedback mechanisms might work because of self-selection of more trustworthy sellers into markets with such...

Lack of information about COVID-19 and its spread may have contributed to excess mortality at the pandemic's onset. In April and May 2020, we implemented a randomized controlled trial with more than 3,000 households in 150 Bangladeshi villages. Our one-to-one information campaign via phone...

Social networks are a key factor of success in life, but they are also strongly segmented on gender, ethnicity, and other demographic characteristics (Jackson, 2010). We present novel evidence on an understudied source of homophily, namely behavioral traits. Behavioral traits are important...

We present the results of a randomized intervention to study how teaching financial literacy to 16-year old high-school students affects their behavior in risk and time preference tasks. Compared to two different control treatments, we find that teaching financial literacy makes subjects behave...

Using data from over 2,000 professionals in 24 large corporations, we show that female leaders shape the relational culture in the workplace dierently than male leaders. Males form homophilic professional ties under male leadership, but female leadership disrupts this pattern, creating a less...

We use novel data on nearly 6,000 children and adolescents aged 6 to 16 that combine incentivized measures of social, time, and risk preferences with rich information on child behavior and family environment to study whether children's economic preferences predict their behavior. Results from...