We conduct a contest experiment to study if spread seeking and effort can be managed in a situation where participants can invest in increasing both the mean and the spread of an uncertain performance variable. Subjects are treated with different prize schemes and in accordance with theory, we...

We conduct a contest experiment where participants can invest in increasing both the mean and the spread of an uncertain performance variable. Subjects are treated with different prize schemes and in accordance with theory we observe substantial investments in spread. We find that both types of...

Recent experimental evidence suggests that noisy behavior correlates strongly with cognitive ability. This puts previous studies that found a negative relation between cognitive ability and risk aversion into perspective and in particular raises the question of how to achieve robust inference in...

We conduct a contest experiment where participants can invest in increasing both the mean and the spread of an uncertain performance variable. Subjects are treated with different prize schemes and in accordance with theory we observe substantial investments in spread. We find that both types of...

We propose the Virtual Bingo Blower (VBB) as a way to generate credible risk and ambiguity in computerized experiments. Using a physics engine-a computer simulation of a physical system-the VBB simulates a conventional bingo blower. Different aspects of the VBB, such as the number of balls,...