We analyze how subjects’ self-assessment depends on whether its accuracy is observable to others. We find that women downgrade their selfassessment given observability while men do not. Women avoid the shame they may have if others observe that they overestimated themselves. Men, however, do...

We extend Akerlof ’s (1970) “Market for Lemons” by assuming that some buyers are overconfident. Buyers in our model receive a noisy signal about the quality of the good that is at display for sale. Overconfident buyers do not update according to Bayes’ rule but take the noisy signal at...

This paper suggests a potential rationale for the recent empirical finding that overconfident agents tend to self-select into more competitive environments (e.g. Dohmen and Falk, forthcoming). In particular, it shows that moderate overconfidence in a contest can improve the agent's performance...

This paper reports findings of a laboratory experiment, which explores how elfassessment regarding the own relative performance is perceived by others. In particular, I investigate whether overconfident subjects or underconfident subjects are considered as more likable by others, and who of the...

The paper models the interaction between risk taking in the financial sector and central bank policy. It shows that in the absence of central bank intervention, the incentive of financial intermediaries to free ride on liquidity in good states may result in excessively low liquidity in bad...

The article illustrates how the integration of modern theory of finance and stochastic dynamic macroeconomic analysis provides a deeper understanding of the link between asset prices and consumption. It shows that this approach gives only a partial explanation for recent trends in US...

In this paper, we study the individual payoff effects of overconfident self-perception in teams. In particular, we demonstrate that the welfare of an overconfident agent in a team of one rational and one overconfident agent or a team of two overconfident agents can be higher than that of the...

Liquidity problems lie at the heart of crises on financial markets as demonstrated in this paper by detailed descriptions of the stock market crash in 1987, the LTCM-crisis in 1998 and the financial market consequences of 11 September 2001. The events also demonstrate that modern central banks,...