Economic experiments have shown that when given the choice between piece-rate and winner-take-all tournament style compensation, women are more reluctant than men to choose tournaments. These gender difference experiments have all relied on a similar framework where subjects were not informed of...

We use a within-subjects experiment with math and word tasks to show that feedback about relative performance moves high ability females towards more competitive forms of compensation such as tournaments, moves low ability men towards piece rate and group pay, and eliminates gender differences...

There is evidence that 9-ending prices are more common and more rigid than other prices. We use data from three sources: a laboratory experiment, a field study, and a large US supermarket chain, to study the cognitive underpinning and the ensuing asymmetry in rigidity associated with 9-ending...

Optimistic beliefs affect important areas of economic decision making, yet direct knowledge on how belief biases operate remains limited. To better understand these biases I conduct an experiment examining beliefs about binary events with financial stakes. By varying financial prizes in...

The conflicting views that agents and voters have about redistributive taxation have been broadly studied. The literature has focused on situations where the counterfac- tual outcomes that would have occurred had other actions been chosen are observable or point identified. I analyze this...

How does the quality of information received by voters affect political polarisation? We address this long-standing question using an election competition model in which voters have to infer an unknown state from some noisy and biased signals. Their policy preferences are shaped by the posterior...

There is an ostensible relationship between whether or not a nation is developed and the interpretation and collection of data in this nation. For instance, if a country is developing, it is difficult to collect figures, though much simpler to interpret them. The opposite is the case in a...

Shang Yang is regarded as the chief architect of the Chinese state. This paper interprets the Reforms of Shang Yang from the perspective of economics and analyzes the Reforms in a mathematical model. Shang Yang tried to rationalize government administration and to organize the economy more...

This paper provides new theoretical insights into the causes and consequences of indirect tax evasion. I propose a decision-making framework that contemplates biased perceptions of apprehension probabilities, which are affected by the environment where the agents operate. This microfounded...

Information or disinformation is more likely to be believed if it comes from a trusted person or source. This means that the impact of disinformation will greatly differ depending on the level of trust. Moreover, one person’s judgement can be influenced by other people’s judgements, which...