The role of the market in mitigating and mediating various forms of behavior is perhaps the central issue facing behavioral economics today. This study designs a field experiment that is explicitly linked to a controlled laboratory experiment to examine whether, and to what extent, social...

We design a field experiment to test two theories of fund-raising for threshold public goods: Andreoni predicts that publicly announced "seed money" will increase charitable donations, whereas Bagnoli and Lipman predict a similar increase for a refund policy. Experimentally manipulating a...

The dictator game represents a workhorse within experimental economics, frequently used to test theory and to provide insights into the prevalence of social preferences. This study explores more closely the dictator game and the literature’s preferred interpretation of its meaning by...

We investigate learning by doing using detailed data from a major auto producer’s assembly plant. We focus on the acquisition, aggregation, transmission, and embodiment of the knowledge stock built through learning. We find that most knowledge was not retained by plant workers despite their...

We study the effect of constraints on chiefs' power on economic outcomes, citizens' attitudes, and social capital. A paramount chief in Sierra Leone must come from a ruling family originally recognized by British colonial authorities. In chiefdoms with fewer ruling families, chiefs face less...

We present a model of nonbalanced growth based on differences in factor proportions and capital deepening. Capital deepening increases the relative output of the more capital-intensive sector but simultaneously induces a reallocation of capital and labor away from that sector. Using a two-sector...