The use of lotteries is advocated to desegregate schools. We study lottery quotas embedded in the two most common school choice mechanisms, namely deferred and immediate acceptance mechanisms. Some seats are allocated based on merit (e.g., grades) and some based on lottery draws. We focus on the...

We present a laboratory experiment on the impact of price framing on consumer decision making. Consumer subjects face a search market where two sellers offer a homogenous good. We examine six different price frames with linear per-unit pricing (that is displayed as such) serving as a benchmark....

In many economic contexts, an elusive variable of interest is the agent's expectation about relevant events, e.g. about other agents' behavior. Recent experimental studies as well as surveys have asked participants to state their beliefs explicitly, but little is known about the causal relation...

We study markets for sensitive personal information. An agent wants to communicate with another party but any revealed information can be intercepted and sold to a third party whose reaction harms the agent. The market for information induces an adverse sorting effect, allocating the information...

We study how subjects in an experiment use different forms of public information about their opponents' past behavior. In the absence of public information, subjects appear to use rather detailed statistics summarizing their private experiences. If they have additional public information, they...

While people on all sides of the political spectrum were amazed that Donald Trump won the Republican nomination this paper demonstrates that Trump's victory was not a crazy event but rather the equilibrium outcome of a multi-candidate race where one candidate, the buffoon, is viewed as likely to...

We experimentally examine the effects of price competition in markets for expe-rience goods where sellers can build up reputations for quality. We compare price competition to monopolistic markets and markets where prices are exogenously fixed (somewhere between the endogenous oligopoly and...

In many economic contexts, an elusive variable of interest is the agent's belief about relevant events, e.g. about other agents' behavior. A growing number of surveys and experiments ask participants to state beliefs explicitly but little is known about the causal relation between beliefs and...

We use a laboratory experiment to investigate whether statements from a governmental institution expressing concerns about price increases trigger such increases by facilitating tacit collusion. Such statements on market conduct are disclosed after an exogenous and unexpected upward cost shock....