We analyze a model in which agents exert effort to create innovations within an organization. When payments are infeasible, the decision on the implementation of a proposal is shown to be made by simple monotonic decision rules. Then we look for optimal rules in several contexts. A trade-off...

We analyze in an incomplete contracts model whether a supplier should be integrated if in addition to his investment level he chooses the intensity of specialization towards the buyer's needs. A basic trade-off arises: While non-integration leads to higher investment incentives, potential...

If a manager stays in office for a long time he will have learned much about his subordinates. Thus competition among them will be weakened as the manager has made up his mind who is suited best for which position. With a new manager the ``rat race'' for favorable tasks is restarted leading...

We examine the question whether a decision should be delegated to a subordinate and whether this is done efficiently. We illustrate that delegation is useful for several reasons. First, it serves to test agents with unknown ability. Then, it may improve their motivation when carrying out...

Zwei Experimente mit Entscheidungstrdgern aus der Praxis des Finanzmarkts sind durchgefuehrt worden, um die Frage zu klaeren, ob es Umstände gibt, unter denen der Fluch des Gewinners auch Kapitalmarktprofis gefdhrdet. Die Antwort ist ein klares "Ja". Der Fluch des Gewinners schlug nicht nur im...

Many important economic and political decisions are made by teams. In the economic literature, however, the decision units are frequently modeled as individual economic agents. The paper experimentally investigates the question to what extent observed team decisions under risk are actually...

Adaptive learning and punishment are highly prominent competing explanations for ultimatum game behavior. We report on an experiment that considers each theory in stand-alone form, so that one does not rely on the other in any substantial way. Our data exhibits patterns for which punishment can...

This paper reports on RatDemo, an example program for the application of RatImage, the Research Assistance Toolbox for computerized human behavior experiments. The complete source code of this short experiment program is listed and briefly discussed. Since RatDemo combines several central...

This paper reports on RatImage, version 3.30. The extended features are presented. RatImage 3.30 is fully downward compatible to the first published version of the Research Assistance Toolbox for Computer-Aided Human Behaivor experiments, RatImage 3.10. This paper is an addendum to the manula of...

If payoffs are tickets for binary lotteries, which involve only two money prizes, then rationality requires expected value maximization in tickets. This payoff scheme was increasingly used to induce risk neutrality in experiments. The experiment presented here involved lottery choice and...