We use an online real-effort experiment to investigate how bonus-based pay and worker productivity interact with workplace cheating. Firms often use bonus-based compensation plans, such as group bonuses and firm-wide profit sharing, that induce considerable uncertainty in how much workers are...

In a real effort experiment with repeated competition we find striking differences in how the work effort of men and women responds to previous wins and losses. For women losing per se is detrimental to productivity, but for men a loss impacts negatively on productivity only when the prize at...

In this paper we investigate how cognitive ability influences behavior, success and the evolution of play towards Nash equilibrium in repeated strategic interactions. We study behavior in a p-beauty contest experiment and find striking differences according to cognitive ability: more cognitively...

In this note, we present a novel computerized real effort task based on moving sliders across a screen which overcomes many of the drawbacks of existing real effort tasks. The task was first developed and used by us in Gill and Prowse (American Economic Review, 2012). We outline the design of...

We extend existing work on the dynamics of labor force participation by distinguishing between full-time and part-time employment and by allowing unobserved heterogeneity in the effects of previous employment outcomes, children and education on labor supply behavior. In addition, unobserved...

How can public pension systems be reformed to ensure fiscal stability in the face of increasing life expectancy? To address this pressing open question in public finance, we use micro data to estimate a structural life-cycle model of individuals' employment, retirement and consumption decisions....

We model the behavior of agents who care about receiving what they feel they deserve in a two-player rank-order tournament. Perceived entitlements are sensitive to how hard an agent has worked relative to her rival, and agents are loss averse around their meritocratically determined endogenous...

Teams are becoming increasingly important in work settings. We develop a framework to study the strategic implications of a meritocratic notion of desert under which team members care about receiving what they feel they deserve. Team members find it painful to receive less than their perceived...

In many markets firms set posted prices which are potentially negotiable. We analyze the optimal marketing mix of pricing and bargaining when price takers buy at posted prices but bargainers attempt to negotiate discounts. The optimal bargaining strategy involves the firms offering bargainers...