The impact of transparency on the extent of reciprocal behavior is investigated in a simple repeated gift exchange experiment, where principals set wages and agents respond by choosing effort levels. In addition to the efforts the principals? payoffs are determined by a random component. It is...

We experimentally investigate a simple version of Holmström?s career concerns model in which firms compete for agents in two consecutive periods. Profits of firms are determined by agents? unknown ability and the effort they choose. Before making second-period wage offers firms are informed...

The impact of transparency on the extent of reciprocal behavior is investigated in a simple repeated gift exchange experiment, where principals set wages and agents respond by choosing effort levels. In addition to the efforts the principals’ payoffs are determined by a random component. It is...

We experimentally investigate a simple version of Holmström’s career concerns model in which firms compete for agents in two consecutive periods. Profits of firms are determined by agents’ unknown ability and the effort they choose. Before making second-period wage offers firms are informed...

We derive a natural definition of responsibility in a formal model where employees care for their career prospects: A superior holds a subordinate responsible for a task, when she announces her beliefs that this subordinate contributes most to this task. We show, that those announced beliefs...

Many experiments indicate that most individuals are not purely motivated by material self interest, but also care about the well being of others. In this paper we examine tournaments among inequity averse agents, who dislike disadvantageous inequity (envy) and advantageous inequity (compassion)....

We study risk-taking behavior in a simple two person tournament in a theoretical model as well as a laboratory experiment. First, a model is analyzed in which two agents simultaneously decide between a risky and a safe strategy and we allow for all possible degrees of correlation between the...

We provide an explanation for peer pressure in teams based on inequity aversion. Analyzing a two-period model with two agents, we find that the effect of inequity aversion strongly depends on the information structure. When contributions are unobservable, agents act as if they were purely...

This paper concerns optimal redistributive income taxation and provision of a public input good in a two-type model with a minimum wage policy implemented for the low-ability type, where firms may outsource part of the production process abroad, and where outsourcing is substitutable for...

This paper concerns public input provision as an instrument for redistribution under international outsourcing by using a model-economy comprising two countries, North and South, where firms in the North may outsource part of their low-skilled labor intensive production to the South. We consider...