The paper studies a learning model in which information about a worker's ability can be acquired symmetrically by the worker and a firm in any period by observing the worker's performance on a given task. Productivity at different tasks is assumed to be differentially sensitive to a worker's...

The pervasive role of information and communications technology (ICT) in the new economy is well documented. There is now considerable agreement among scholars regarding the ICT contribution to national productivity growth. On the other hand, the production spillover and network externality...

In this paper, we adapt the audit studies methodology to analyze gender and racial differences in hiring for a particular segment of the market of three selected occupations in Metropolitan Lima: salespersons, secretaries and (accounting and administrative) assistants. The adapted pseudo-audit...

This paper tests stylized facts and theories from behavioral economics and laboratory experiments using a randomized field experiment of our design. A major South African consumer credit lender issued 60,000 scripted direct mail solicitations where several marketing “treatments†were...

This paper estimates the prevalence of asymmetric information in a consumer credit market using a field experiment of our design. A major South African lender issued 60,000 direct mail offers where the interest rate was randomized along two different dimensions — an initial “offer...

This paper proposes a test for the existence of placebo effects, as described by the so-called expectancy theory. This theory, which is the dominant medical theory of how placebo effects operate, posits that health outcomes rise in individuals' beliefs about the probability that they are getting...

Self regulation is a mechanism of quality vigilance that is frequently used in credence good industries. The providers in these markets generally form a Self Regulated Organization (SRO), composed by some members of the industry, whose main job is to convince consumers through an active...

We solve in closed form the optimal consumption / portfolio choice problem for the class of isoelastic utility functions under incomplete information about the mean return of the stock price. Our approach consists in converting the original investor's problem into an equivalent program where the...

Many people are fired from their jobs for poor performance. However, it is difficult to distinguish whether they are fired because they are not well suited for their job (sorting explanation) or because the firms are trying to provide incentives for effort (incentive explanation). This paper...

This paper examines the production aspect of money to bridge between the search-theoretic models and the canonical Walrasian growth models. In this paper, we argue that money can generate real effects via technology choice (high vs. low), we model explicitly the pattern of exchanges to explore...