We conducted a field experiment in a controlled work environment to investigate the effect of motivational talk and its interaction with monetary incentives. We find that motivational talk significantly improves performance only when accompanied by performance pay. Moreover, performance pay...

We study gender differences in relation to performance and sabotage in competitions. While we find no systematic gender differences in performance in the real effort task, we observe a strong gender gap in sabotage choices in our experiment. This gap is rooted in the uncertainty about the...

We investigate contract negotiations in the presence of externalities and asymmetric information in a controlled laboratory experiment. In our setup, it is commonly known that it is always ex post efficient for player A to implement a project that has a positive external effect on player B ....

We study the differences in behavior of males and females in a two-player tournament with sabotage in a controlled lab experiment. Implementing a real-effort design and a principal who is paid based on the agent's output, we find that males and females do not differ in their performance in the...

We study risk-taking behavior in a simple two person tournament in a theoretical model as well as a laboratory experiment. First, a model is analyzed in which two agents simultaneously decide between a risky and a safe strategy and we allow for all possible degrees of correlation between the...

We study risk-taking behavior in a simple two person tournament in a theoretical model as well as a laboratory experiment. First, a model is analyzed in which two agents simultaneously decide between a risky and a safe strategy and we allow for all possible degrees of correlation between the...

We empirically investigate if tournaments between heterogeneous contestants are less intense. To test our hypotheses we use professional sports data from the TOYOTA Handball-Bundesliga, the major handball league in Germany. Using either differences in betting odds or rankings to measure ability...

The practical relevance of favouritism among students of the same study path is evident in lifelong memberships in fraternities or sororities or in high donations to faculties. In our study, we focus on the in-group favouritism of students by examining the trade-off of acting based on in-group...

This paper reports data from a laboratory experiment on two-period moral hazard problems. The findings corroborate the contract-theoretic insight that even though the periods are technologically unrelated, due to incentive considerations principals can benefit from offering long-term contracts...

Overconfidence is a well-established behavioral phenomenon that involves an overestimation of own capabilities. We introduce a model, in which managers and agents exert effort in a joint production, after the manager decides on the allocation of the tasks. A rational manager tends to delegate...