Previous studies have found evidence of a self-serving bias in bargaining and dispute resolution. We use experimental data to test for this effect in a simulated labor relatonship. We find a consistent discrepancy between employer beliefs and employee actions that can only be attributed to...

It has long been standard in agency theory to search for incentive-compatible mechanisms on the assumption that people care only about their own material wealth. However, this assumption is clearly refuted by numerous experiments, and we feel that it may be useful to consider nonpecuniary...

This paper explores the effect of the possibility of third-party intervention on behavior in a variant of the Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe (1995) quot;Investment Gamequot;. A third-party's material payoff is not affected by the decisions made by the other participants, but this person may choose...

We study the following basic intuition: when faced with a decision how to split their investment between a risky lottery and an asset with a fixed return, people increase the proportion invested in the risky option the more they like the lottery. We find counter-examples to this, and in fact we...

Previous works on asymmetric information in asset markets tend to focus on the potential gains in the asset market itself. We focus on the market for information and conduct an experimental study to explore, in a game of finite but uncertain duration, whether reputation can be an effective...

Are men more willing to take financial risks than women? The answer to this important question is not clear from the existing literature. We propose a novel approach to this issue, in which we both assemble the data from many experiments with thousands of participants in a simple investment...

We study experimentally how the ability to communicate affects the frequency and effectiveness of flexible and inflexible contracts in a bilateral trade context where sellers can adjust trade quality after observing a post-contractual cost shock and a discretionary buyer transfer. In the absence...

Gneezy (2005) reports evidence indicating that in some settings people do not like to lie. In many other situations people do not suffer when they lie. We argue that the theory of simple guilt can accommodate these observations.

We test experimentally an explanation of over and under confidence as motivated by (perhaps unconscious) strategic concerns, and find compelling evidence supporting this hypothesis in the behavior of participants who send and respond to others’ statements of confidence about how well they have...

This article examines whether social comparisons have behavioral effects on workers' performance when a firm can choose workers' wages or let them choose their own. Firms can delegate the wage decision to neither, one or both workers in the firm. We vary the information workers receive, finding...