We address a basic diffculty with incorporating fairness into standard utilitarian choice theories. Standard utilitarian theories evaluate lotteries according to the (weighted) utility over ?nal outcomes and assume in particular that a lottery is never preferred over getting the most preferred...

This experiment explores whether individuals know that other people are biased. We confirm that overestimation of abilities is a pervasive problem, but observe that most people are not aware of it, i.e. they think others are unbiased. We investigate several explanations for this result. As a...

We study a model of imperfectly discriminating contests with two ex ante symmetric agents. We consider four institutional settings: Contestants move either sequentially or simultaneously and in addition their types are either public or private information. We find that an effort-maximizing...

We consider two-stage tournaments with different information structures: Either competitors observe each others’ first-stage effort before entering the second stage or not. In laboratory experiments, we observe that subjects adjust their effort to the effort information (if available): While...

We analyze how subjects' self-assessment depends on whether its accuracy is observable to others. We find that women downgrade their self-assessment given observability while men do not. Women avoid the shame they may have if others observe that they overestimated themselves. Men, however, do...

This paper suggests a potential rationale for the recent empirical finding that overconfident agents tend to self-select into more competitive environments (e.g. Dohmen and Falk, forthcoming). In particular, it shows that moderate overconfidence in a contest can improve the agent's performance...

We examine the effect of deceptive advertising on voting decisions in elections. We model two-candidate elections in which 1) voters are uncertain about candidates' attributes; and 2) candidates can inform voters of their attributes by sending advertisements. We compare political campaigns with...

Is free-riding in teams reduced when one member receives a signal on his colleagueís performance? And how does free-riding depend on the signal's type? We address these questions in experimental teams in which two agents sequentially exert effort to contribute to the team output. We vary the...

We study a model of imperfectly discriminating contests with two ex ante symmetric agents. We consider four institutional settings: Contestants move either sequentially or simultaneously and in addition their types are either public or private information. We find that an effort-maximizing...