Economists are increasingly turning to the experimental method as a means to estimate causal effects. By using randomization to identify key treatment effects, theories previously viewed as untestable are now scrutinized, efficacy of public policies are now more easily verified, and stakeholders...

Using unique panel data, we compare cognitive performance and wagering behavior of children (10-11 years) with adults playing in the Swedish version of the TV-shows Jeopardy and Junior Jeopardy. Although facing the same well-known high-stakes game, and controlling for performance differences,...

Today 2.6 billion people in developing countries rely on biomass as primary cooking fuel, with profound negative implications for their well-being. Improved biomass cooking stoves are alleged to counteract these adverse effects. This paper evaluates take-up and impacts of low-cost improved...

When asking for donations, charitable organizations often use suggestions concerning the amount of potential contributions. In our randomized field experiment, opera visitors received solicitation letters asking to support a social youth project organized by the opera house. The three different...

The presence of workers who reciprocate higher wages with greater effort can have important consequences for labor markets. Knowledge about the determinants of reciprocal effort choices is, however, incomplete. We investigate the role of fairness perceptions and social preferences in workers’...

Empirical literature on moral hazard focuses exclusively on the direct impact of asymmetric information on market outcomes, thus ignoring possible repercussions. We present a field experiment in which we consider a phenomenon that we call second-degree moral hazard – the tendency of the supply...

The underlying motivations for envy or related social preferences and their impact on agricultural innovations are examined by combining data from money burning experimental game and household survey from Ethiopia.  In the first stage of the money burning experimental game, income inequality is...

Using data from experimental games and household survey from 1,200 married couples in three sites in Ethiopia, this paper uses different versions of a voluntary contribution mechanism to test for household efficiency.  The experimental and econometric analyses provide many interesting results...

Using data from a field experiment conducted in seventy Colombian municipalities, we investigate who pools risk with whom when risk pooling arrangements are not formally enforced.  We explore the roles played by risk attitudes and network connections both theoretically and empirically.  We...

Economists have traditionally assumed that individual behavior is motivated exclusively by extrinsic incentives.  Social physchologists, in contrast, stress that intrinsic motivations are also important.  In recent work, economic theorists have started to build psychological factors, like...