Showing 1 - 10 of 110
Prior laboratory experiments have studied general equilibrium economies constructed from "induced preferences" for artificial goods. We introduce new methods that allow us to study economies constructed instead from subjects' actual, "homegrown" preferences. Our subjects reveal their preferences...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011763083
As a recent literature has demonstrated, men and women differ in their willingness to sort into competitive environments. In particular, men are more willing than women to compete. We investigate whether it is possible to reduce the gender gap in willingness to compete through an information...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012616327
We present a legislative bargaining model of the provision of a durable public good over an infinite horizion. In each period, there is a societal endowment which can either be invested in the public good or consumed. We characterize the optimal public policy, defined by the time path of...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010307744
In an in influential study, Mas and Moretti (2009) found that worker effort is positively related to the productivity of workers who see him, but not workers who do not see him. They interpret this as evidence that social pressure can reduce free riding. In this paper we report an attempt to...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010352470
Ambition as the desire for personal achievement is an important driver of behavior. Using laboratory experiments, we study the role of social influence on ambition in two distinct domains of achievement, namely performance goals and task complexity. In the first case, participants set themselves...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10011996944
The psychology literature provides ample evidence that people have difficulties taking the perspective of less-informed others. This paper presents a controlled experiment showing that this "curse of knowledge" can cause comparative overconfidence and overentry into competition. In a broader...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010397879
An individual is affected by the curse of knowledge when he fails to appreciate the viewpoint of a lesser-informed agent. In contrast to a rational person, the cursed individual behaves as if part of his private information were common knowledge. This systematic cognitive bias alters many...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012141849
We report on an experiment examining behavior and equilibrium selection in two similar, infinitely repeated games, Stag Hunt and Prisoner's Dilemma under anonymous random matching. We are interested in the role that precedents may play for equilibrium selection between these two stage game...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010478794
We present a new and simple mechanism for repeated public good environments. In the Conditional Contribution Mechanism (CCM), agents send two message of the form, "I am willing to contribute x units to the public good if in total y units are contributed." This mechanism offers agents risk-free...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10012109314
We report an experiment on the Probabilistic Serial (PS) mechanism for allocating indivisible goods. The PS mechanism, a recently discovered alternative to the widely used Random Serial Dictatorship mechanism, has attractive fairness and efficiency properties if people report their preferences...
Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010313111