Authority and power permeate political, social, and economic life, but empirical knowledge about the motivational origins and consequences of authority is limited. We study the motivation and incentive effects of authority experimentally in an authority-delegation game. Individuals often retain...

We construct a dynamic theory of civil conflict hinging on inter-ethnic trust and trade. The model economy is inhabitated by two ethnic groups. Inter-ethnic trade requires imperfectly observed bilateral investments and one group has to form beliefs on the average propensity to trade of the other...

I present a game-theoretic model where economic competition and attention competition are interdependent. On the one hand the effort to attract consumer attention depends on the value of attention to the firm which depends on the grade of price competition among all perceived firms. On the other...

We study communication in a two-player coordination game with Pareto-ranked equilibria. Prior research demonstrates that efficient coordination is difficult without communication but obtains regularly with (mandatory) costless pre-play messages. In a laboratory experiment, we modify...

We design a laboratory experiment to identify causal performance effects of top-down communication between managers and their subordinates. Our focus lies on communication that resolves uncertainty about the work environment but does not provide task-specific knowledge. Recent articles in the...

Recent field evidence suggests a positive link between overconfidence and innovative activities. In this paper we argue that the connection between overconfidence and innovation is more complex than the previous literature suggests. In particular, we show theoretically and experimentally that...

We extend the analysis of the interbank market model of Gale and Yorulmazer (2013) by studying a larger set of trading mechanisms. A trading mechanism, which allows for randomized trading, restores efficiency. In contrast to Gale and Yorulmazer, we find that fire-sale asset prices are efficient...

Authority and power permeate political, social, and economic life, but empirical knowledge about the motivational origins and consequences of authority is limited. We study the motivation and incentive effects of authority experimentally in an authority- delegation game. Individuals often retain...

Being good-looking seems to generate substantial benefits in many social interactions, making the "beauty premium" a not to be underrated economic factor. This paper investigates how physical attractiveness enables people to generate these benefits in the case of cooperation, using field data...

The goal of this paper is to study how informational frictions affect asset liquidity in OTC markets in a laboratory setting. The experiments replicate an OTC market similar to the one used in monetary and financial economics (Shi, 1995; Trejos and Wright, 1995; Duffie, Garleanu, and Pedersen, 2005):...