We examine peer effects in risk taking with complete information and compare explanations for peer effects based on relative payoff concerns to explanations that allow peer choices to matter. We vary experimentally whether individuals can condition a simple lottery choice on the lottery choice,...

We show that choices in competitive behavior may entail a gender wage gap. In our experi ments, employees first choose a remuneration scheme (competitive tournament vs. piece rate) and then conduct a real-effort task. Employers know the pie size the employee has generated, the remuneration...

We experimentally compare the incentive effects of rewarding individuals for outstanding performance publicly versus privately. We implement two real-effort tasks, which differ in how prestigious subjects perceive working on them. In both tasks private and public feedback similarly enhances...

Becker’s theory of taste-based discrimination predicts that relative employment of the discriminated social group will improve if there is a decrease in the level of prejudice for the marginally discriminating employer. In this paper we experimentally test this prediction offered by Becker...

We show and explain how generosity beyond that explainable by social preferences can manifest in bargaining. We analyze an ultimata game with two parties vying to coalesce with a randomly chosen proposer. They simultaneously demand shares of the surplus. The proposer must then make an offer that...

In this paper we experimentally investigate whether partial coercion can in combination with conditional cooperation increase contributions to a public good. We are especially interested in the behavior of the non-coerced populations. The main finding is that in our setting conditional...

How do people react to setbacks and successes? I introduce a new measure of challenge-seeking to determine the effect of winning and losing in a competition on the willingness to seek further challenges. Participants in a lab experiment compete in two-person tournaments and are then informed of...

Although reciprocity is a key concept in the social sciences, it is still unclear why people engage in costly reciprocation. In this study, physiological and self-report measures were employed to investigate the role of emotions, using the Power-to-Take Game. In this 2-person game, player 1 can...

Harbaugh (1998a) has shown theoretically that charities can increase the size of donations by publicly acknowledging their donors using categories. In a complementary paper,using the data on the donations given by 146 lawyers to their almamater law school, Harbaugh (1998b) provided empirical...