We analyze the optimal combination of promotion tournaments and individual performance pay in an employment relationship. An agent's effort is non-observable and he has private information about his suitability for promotion. We find that the principal does not provide individual incentives if...

We use the financial crisis of 2007–2009 as a laboratory to examine the costs and benefits of teams versus single managers in asset management. We find that when a fund uses complex trading strategies involving the use of CDS team-managed funds outperform solo-managed funds. This may be due to...

Robust utility functionals arise as numerical representations of investor preferences, when the investor is uncertain about the underlying probabilistic model and averse against both risk and model uncertainty. In this paper, we study the duality theory for the problem of maximizing the robust...

In the data, individual prices change frequently and by large amounts. In standard sticky price models, frequent and large price changes imply a fast response of the aggregate price level to nominal shocks. This paper presents a model in which price setting firms optimally decide what to...

We develop a sequential trade model of Iceberg order execution in a limit order book. The Iceberg-trader has the freedom to expose his trading intentions or (partially) shield the true order size against other market participants. Order exposure can cause drastic market reactions (“market...

We investigate violations of consequentialism in the form of the stochastic dominance property. The property is shared by many theories of choice and implies that the decision-maker prefers receiving the best outcome for sure over all lotteries that involve multiple outcomes. We run experiments...

Supported by several recent investigations the empirical pricing kernel paradox might be considered as a stylized fact. In Chabi-Yo et al. (2008) simulation studies have been presented which suggest that this paradox might be caused by regime switching of stock prices in financial markets....

We consider two semiparametric models for the weight function in a biased sample model. The object of our interest parametrizes the weight function, and it is either Euclidean or non Euclidean. One of the models discussed in this paper is motivated by the estimation the mixing distribution of...

Three results emerge from a simple experiment on imitation. First, I find behavior which strongly suggests an intention to imitate. Second, players im- itate successful other players rather than repeating successful actions. Third, to find imitation examples, players use several periods of...