Arad and Rubinstein (2012a) have designed a novel game to study level-. k reasoning experimentally. Just like them, we find that the depth of reasoning is very limited and clearly different from that in equilibrium play. We show that such behavior is even robust to repetitions; hence there is,...

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...

Managers often use tournament incentive schemes which motivate workers to compete for the top, compete to avoid the bottom, or both. In this paper we test the effectiveness and efficiency of these incentive schemes. To do so, we utilize optimal contracts in a principal-agent setting, using a...

Entry decisions in market entry games usually depend on the belief about how many others are entering the market, the belief about the own rank in a real effort task, and subjects’ risk preferences. In this paper I am able to replicate these basic results and examine two further dimensions:...

Journal rankings are important for evaluating research output, for academic promotions, and for allocating funds. Examining the assignment of economics journals to different quartiles of citation-based rankings, the authors found that about 60% of journals remain in the same quartile and about...

We use a laboratory experiment to examine whether and to what extent other-regarding preferences (efficiency, inequality aversion and maximin concerns) of team managers influence their management style in choice under risk. We find that managers who prefer efficiency are more likely to exercise...

We study the behavior of football (soccer) referees in the German Bundesliga. Referees are requested to act as impartial agents. However, they may allocate benefits and rewards in a biased way. Agency theory has long neglected this possible form of malfeasance of economic agents, but has rather...

This paper addresses the institutional concentration of authors in 15 top economics journals from 1977 to 1997. The concentration of authors' PhD affiliations is substantially higher than the concentration of authors' current affiliations. Relating input indicators, such as population, number of...