Firms often discourage certain categories of individuals from buying their products, seemingly at odds with typical assumptions about profit maximization. This paper provides a potential rationale for such firm behavior: Consumers seek to signal that they have "desirable" ideological values to...

In recent decades, researchers have found compelling evidence of discrimination in the labor and housing market toward ethnic minorities based on field experiments using fictitious applications. However, these findings may be exaggerated as the names used for ethnic minorities in various...

Social networks are a key factor of success in life, but they are also strongly segmented on gender, ethnicity, and other demographic characteristics (Jackson, 2010). We present novel evidence on an understudied source of homophily: behavioral traits. Behavioral traits are important determinants...

Social networks are a key factor of success in life, but they are also strongly segmented on gender, ethnicity, and other demographic characteristics (Jackson, 2010). We present novel evidence on an understudied source of homophily, namely behavioral traits. Behavioral traits are important...

Social networks are a key factor of success in life, but they are also strongly segmented on gender, ethnicity, and other demographic characteristics (Jackson, 2010). We present novel evidence on an understudied source of homophily: behavioral traits. Behavioral traits are important determinants...

Under simple majority voting an absolute majority of voters may choose policies that are harmful to minorities. It is the purpose of sub- and super-majority rules to protect legitimate minority interests. We study how voting rules are chosen under the veil of ignorance and whether there are...

Modern 'principal-agent theory' has made a lot of progress in proposing theoretical Solutions to agency problems. This paper contributes to a better understanding of behavior in agency situations. In particular, we provide experimental evidence on offered contracts and effort choices in a simple...

We compare the standard one-bid first price auction to a corresponding two-bid first price auction where each buyer may place two bids: a high bid and a low one and the winner pays his low bid if this was higher than all other bids. We characterize the equilibria of the two mechanisms and prove...

With the help of a simple model, we show that the hindsight bias can lead to inefficient delegation decisions. This prediction is tested experimentally. In an online experiment that was conducted during the FIFA World Cup 2010 participants were asked to predict a number of outcomes of the...

This paper presents an experimental test of the theory of individual sense of fairness of Karni and Safra (2000). According to this theory individuals' choice among random procedures designed to allocate indivisible goods is motivated, in part, by concern for fairness. The experimental study is...