We develop a model of manager-employee relationships where employees care more for their manager when they are more convinced that their manager cares for them. Managers can signal their altruistic feelings towards their employees in two ways: by offering a generous wage and by giving attention....

We study the relation between formal incentives and social exchange in organizations where employees work for several managers and reciprocate a manager’s attention with higher effort. To this end we develop a common agency model with two-sided moral hazard. We show that when effort is...

Social identity has become accepted as a key concept underpinning the endogeneity of economic behaviour and preferences. It is important in explaining attitudes towards redistribution and pro-social behaviour. We examine how economic theory measures social identity and its effects on preferences...

This paper uses the unique social structure of Arab communities to examine the effect of social identity on voter turnout. We first show that voters are more likely to vote for a candidate who shares their social group (signified by last name) as compared to other candidates. Using last name as...

This paper argues that the “Economics of Crime” concentrates too much on punishment as a policy to fight crime, which is unwise for several reasons. There are important instances in which punishment simply cannot reduce crime. Several feasible alternatives to punishment exist, such as...

Behavioral economics documents the importance of status and self-image concerns in the workplace, but is largely silent about how to instrumentalize them to induce effort. Awards - widespread in the corporate sector and elsewhere - are motivators that derive their value from such social...

Awards in the form of orders, medals, decorations and titles are ubiquitous in monarchies and republics, private organizations, not-for-profit and profit-oriented firms. Nevertheless, economists have disregarded this kind of non-material extrinsic incentive.The demand for awards relies on an...

Economists draw important lessons for modern development from the medieval Maghribi traders who, according to Greif, enforced contracts multilaterally through a closed, private-order ‘coalition’. We show that this view is untenable. The Maghribis used formal legal mechanisms and entered...