A pervasive feature in the finance industry is relative performance, which can include extrinsic (money), intrinsic (self-image), and reputational (status) motives. In this paper, we model a portfolio decision with two assets and investigate how reputational motives (i.e., the public...

Two aspects of social context are central to the finance industry: (i) financial professionals make investment decisions for customers and (ii) social competition/rankings are a pervasive feature. We link both lines of literature to investigate professionals' risk-taking behavior when investing...

This paper investigates how heterogeneity in contestants' investment costs affects the competition intensity in a dynamic elimination contest. Theory predicts that the absolute level of investment costs has no effect on the competition intensity in homogeneous interactions. Relative cost...

We investigate how heterogeneity in contestants' investment costs affects competition expenditures in a dynamic elimination contest with different seeding variants of contestants. Theory predicts that expenditures in dynamic contests are lower when competitors are heterogeneous than when they...

We show in a public goods experiment on three continents that conditional cooperation is a universal behavioral regularity. Yet, the number of conditional cooperators and the extent of conditional cooperation are much higher in the U.S.A. than anywhere else. -- conditional cooperation ; public...

Contests are meant to attract the best performers and incentivize high effort, however, they may also attract cheaters who try to win via illicit means which crowds out the best performers. We use a laboratory experiment to explore the role of self-selection in contests with a possibility of...

Understanding the roots of human cooperation among strangers is of great importance for solving pressing social dilemmas and maintening public goods in human societies. We study the development of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine...