This paper analyses the survival of the complete cohort of more than 162,000 limited companies incorporated in Britain in 2001 over the subsequent five-year period.  For this purpose, we estimate firms' hazards of failure and survival functions using nonparametric and semi-parametric...

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...

This paper describes and analyzes the results of a unique field experiment especially designed to test the effects of the level of commitment and information available to individuals when sharing risk.  We find that limiting exogenously provided commitment is associated with less risk sharing,...

This paper investigates whether expectations of trustworthiness and resulting acts of trust accord with an objective model of trustworthiness or are biased. Combining experimental and survey data, I find that Ghanaian workers appropriately take account of the religiousness of trustees, but...

This paper presents rigorous and direct tests of two assumptions relating to limited commitment and asymmetric information that underpin current models of risk pooling. A specially designed economic experiment involving 678 subjects across 23 Zimbabwean villages is used to solve the problems of...

We explore the role of reciprocity in wage determination by combining experimental and survey data. The experiment is similar to Berg, Dickhaut and McCabe`s (1995) and is conducted with Ghanaian manufacturing workers. The survey relates to the same sample workers and the firms within which they...

An economic experiment involving separate sessions in 24 small, tightly knit communities reveals that trust is higher where greater trustworthiness is expected and lower variance in levels of trustworthiness is perceived. A model in which potential trusters behaviour is likened to a risky...

Inequality considerations are a motive for making positive offers in the Ultimatum Game and rejecting small ones, but decision error could have the same effect. I find evidence for both of these considerations and a different relative importance amongst Zimbabwean villagers, of whom some...

Using survey data and a field experiment to measure agents` risk and time preferences, we identify the agent-type that is free to reveal its preferences through decisions about pension system participation. Thus, we show that in Chile the appropriate focus for policy makers interested in the...

This paper develops a sequential learning estimator of production functions and productivity dynamics for unbalanced establishment panels. Extending an idea from the literature on dynamic industry models, establishments are uncertain about their own idiosyncratic productivities and update...