In this study, we investigate behavioral constraints on pricing by using a novel laboratory experiment in which actual consumption goods are traded. We test different models and provide several insights into pricing and reactions to price discrimination. First, we identify the extent to which...

As predicted by loss aversion, numerous studies find that penalties elicit greater effort than bonuses, even when the underlying payoffs are identical. However, loss aversion also predicts that workers will demand higher wages to accept penalty contracts. In six experiments I recruited workers...

A key open question for theories of reference-dependent preferences is what determines the reference point. One candidate is expectations: what people expect could affect how they feel about what actually occurs. In a real-effort experiment, we manipulate the rational expectations of subjects...

We experimentally investigate the effect of time pressure in a rich-context, unstructured bargaining game with earned status and competing reference points. Our results show that average opening proposals, concessions, and agreed shares are very similar across different levels of time pressure....

This paper reports results of two controlled experiments on the behavioural effects of relative performance information (RPI) in different organizational structures. Our baseline study 1 focuses on a centralized organizational structure where employees are exogenously assigned to either a...

We experimentally investigate a bargaining environment in which players negotiate over a fixed payment to one player, while the other player receives the residual from a random pie realization after subtracting the fixed payment. Contrary to the intuition that risk exposure is detrimental, we...

We show that professional soccer players exhibit reference-dependent behavior during matches. Controlling for the state of the match and for unobserved heterogeneity, we show on a minute-by-minute basis that a player breaches the rules of the game, measured by the referee's assignment of cards,...

We propose a theory of ex post inefficient renegotiation that is based on loss aversion. When two parties write a long-term contract that has to be renegotiated after the realization of the state of the world, they take the initial contract as a reference point to which they compare gains and...

People’s fairness preferences are an important constraint for what constitutes an acceptable economic transaction, yet little is known about how these preferences are formed. In this paper, we provide clean evidence that contrast effects arising from previous transactions play an important...

This paper documents and analyzes an important and puzzling stylized fact about retirement behavior: the large concentration of job exits at specific ages. In Germany, almost 30% of workers retire precisely in the month when they reach one of three statutory retirement ages, although there is...