Whistle-blowing by employees plays a major role in uncovering corporate fraud. Various recent laws aim at improving protection of whistle-blowers and enhancing their willingness to report. Evidence on the effectiveness of such legislation is, however, scarce. Moreover, critics have raised...

By downplaying externalities, magnifying the cost of moral behavior, or suggesting not being pivotal, exculpatory narratives can allow individuals to maintain a positive image when in fact acting in a morally questionable way. Conversely, responsibilizing narratives can help sustain better...

In democracies voters rely on media outlets to learn about politically salient issues. This raises an important question: how strongly can media affect public perceptions? This paper uses a natural experiment - the staggered introduction of the Digital TV signal in Italy - to measure the effect...

When decision-makers overemphasize salient features under limited attention, biased decisions can result in settings in which decisions should be unbiased. We exploit a sudden shock in the salience of individuals of Moroccan descent in the Netherlands to test the vulnerability of decisions of...

In this paper we analyze the impact of a randomized information package on the understanding and uptake of community based health insurance. The information package consists of a detailed brochure which is distributed to households through home visits, a video also presented in people's homes...

We examine how informational frictions impact schooling and work outcomes. To do so, we estimate a dynamic structural model where individuals face uncertainty about their academic ability and productivity, which respectively determine their schooling utility and wages. Our framework accounts for...