Cason and Plott (2014) show that subjects' misconception about the incentive properties of the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) value elicitation procedure can generate data patterns that look like — and might thus be misinterpreted as evidence for — preferences constructed from endowments or...

Should workers of a firm be organizationally integrated to realize benefits from benchmarking? Or should they be separated to preclude horizontal social comparisons? This paper highlights a trade-off that arises if social comparisons in firms are endogenous. We analyze a principal multi-agent...

Counterproductive reactions to unfavorable trading prices can cause inefficiencies in economic exchange. This paper studies whether the use of a competitive pricing mechanism reduces such wasteful activities. We report data from a laboratory experiment where a powerful buyer can trade with one...

This study investigates the determinants of individuals' demand for and supply of paternalistic interventions - measures intended to help others avoid mistakes. Based on data from an incentivized experiment conducted with a large U.S. sample, we find that both demand and supply are higher for...