We examine Popper's falsifiability within an economic model in which a tester hires a potential expert to produce a theory. Payments are contingent on the performance of the theory vis-a-vis data. We show that if experts are strategic, falsifiability has no power to distinguish scientific...

The difficulties in properly anticipating key economic variables may encourage decision makers to rely on experts' forecasts. Professional forecasters, however, may not be reliable and so their forecasts must be empirically tested. This may induce experts to forecast strategically in order to...

Many sales, sports, and research contests are put in place to maximize contestants' performance. We investigate and provide a complete characterization of the prize structures that achieve this objective in settings with many contestants. The contestants may be ex ante asymmetric in their...