Money illusion means that people behave differently when the same objective situation is represented in nominal terms rather than in real terms. This paper shows that seemingly innocuous differences in payoff representation cause pronounced differences in nominal price inertia indicating the...

Economists long considered money illusion to be largely irrelevant. Here we show, however, that money illusion has powerful effects on equilibrium selection. If we represent pay-offs in nominal terms, choices converge to the Pareto inefficient equilibrium; however, if we lift the veil of money...

We study the effects of reputation and competition in a stylized market for experience goods. If interaction is anonymous, such markets perform poorly: sellers are not trustworthy, and buyers do not trust sellers. If sellers are identifiable and can, hence, build a reputation, efficiency...

We use a unique panel data set to analyse price setting in restaurants in Switzerland 1977-93, for items known to have sticky prices. The macroeconomic environment during this time period allows us to examine how firms adjust prices at low (0%) and fairly high (7%) inflation. Our results...

We develop a simple model of short- and long-term unemployment to study how labour market institutions interact with labour market conditions and personal characteristics of the unemployed. We analyze how the decision to exit unemployment and to mitigate human capital degradation by retraining...

We investigate the "law of small numbers" using a unique panel data set on lotto gambling. Because we can track individual players over time, we can measure how they react to outcomes of recent lotto drawings. We can therefore test whether they behave as if they believe they can predict lotto...

We present a new type of field experiment to investigate ethnic prejudice in the workplace. Our design allows us to study how potential discriminators respond to changes in the cost of discrimination. We find that ethnic discrimination is common but remarkably responsive to the "price of...

We experimentally investigate information aggregation through majority voting when some voters are biased. In such situations, majority voting can have a “dark side”, i.e. result in groups making choices inferior to those made by individuals acting alone. We develop a model to predict how...

Loss aversion is one of the most robust findings to have emerged from behavioral economics. Surprisingly little attention, however, has been devoted to nominal loss aversion, the interaction of loss aversion and money illusion. People tend to think of transactions in terms of their nominal...

The ability of groups to implement efficiency-enhancing institutions is emerging as a central theme of research in economics. This paper explores voting on a scheme of intergroup competition which facilitates cooperation in a social dilemma situation. Experimental results show that the...