Are women disproportionately attracted to work environments where cooperation rather than competition is rewarded? This paper reports the results of a real-effort experiment in which participants choose between an individual compensation scheme and a team-based payment scheme. We find that women...

Recent developments in economic theory model intertemporal choice decisions as problems of restraining one's natural impulse to consume today. We use interventions that have been shown in the psychology literature to affect impulse control to examine whether this is indeed the case for...

We experimentally manipulate two aspects of the cognitive environment -- cognitive depletion and recent sugar intake -- and estimate their effects on individuals' time preferences in a way that allows us to identify the structural parameters of a simple (α,β,δ) intertemporal utility function...

In the Dutch Postcode Lottery a postal code (19 households on average) is randomly selected weekly, and prizes –consisting of cash and a new BMW-- are awarded to lottery participants living in that postal code. On average, this generates a temporary, unexpected income shock equal to about...

The 'ratchet effect' refers to a situation where a principal uses private information that is revealed by an agent's early actions to the agent's later disadvantage, in a context where binding multi-period contracts are not enforceable. In a simple, context-rich environment, we experimentally...