Joint household decision-making may be prevented by the incentives of individuals to withhold information or avoid bargaining. We study whether these barriers to joint decision-making keep female labor force participation low in India. In partnership with one of India’s largest carpet...

We conducted a controlled experiment to study how different gender frames used in the instructions affect economic behavior. In our experiment, we systematically varied the framing of the instructions, either using the male, the female, or a gender-inclusive form. Participants played three...

We investigate the link between leadership, beliefs and pro-social behavior. This link is interesting because field evidence suggests that people's behavior in domains like charitable giving, tax evasion, corporate culture and corruption is influenced by leaders (CEOs, politicians) and beliefs...

Beliefs about collective outcomes, such as economic growth or firm profitability, play an important role in many contexts. We study biases in the formation of such beliefs. Specifically, we explore whether over-optimism and self-serving biases in information processing—documented for beliefs...

Following Garicano (2000), we consider groups whose members decide what knowledge to acquire and how to use this knowledge in production. If efficient production requires common knowledge, all group members should become workers and acquire common knowledge. But if efficient production requires...

Economic and social interaction takes place between individuals with heterogeneous characteristics. We investigate experimentally the emergence and informal enforcement of different contribution norms to a public good in homogeneous and different heterogeneous groups. When punishment is not...

Policies and explicit private incentives designed for self-regarding individuals sometimes are less effective or even counterproductive when they diminish altruism, ethical norms and other social preferences. Evidence from 51 experimental studies indicates that this crowding out effect is...

This paper investigates how group membership and competition among trustors interact with trust and trustworthiness in a laboratory one-shot trust game. To analyze these effects, we apply a 2x2 design. We induce group membership by letting subjects play coordination games with clear focal...