We provide field evidence that individuals engage in motivated optimism in the face of impending risk, and that their belief distortions are time- and stake-dependent. Our study leverages exogenous variation in when people are required to return to their workplaces during the COVID-19 pandemic....

We study the external validity of a standard laboratory measure of cheating. The results show that cheating in the lab significantly predicts classroom misbehavior in middle and high school students.

We study the external validity of a standard laboratory measure of cheating. The results show that cheating in the lab significantly predicts classroom misbehavior in middle and high school students.

We study whether employment history can provide information about a worker's noncognitive skills - in particular about "work attitude", or the ability to work well and cooperatively with others. Our hypothesis is that, holding all else equal, a worker's frequent job changes can indicate poorer...

We conducted an experiment with 182 inmates from a maximum-security prison to analyze the impact of criminal identity on dishonest behavior. We randomly primed half of the prisoners to increase the mental saliency of their criminal identity, while treating the others as the control group. The...

In recent years, the banking industry has witnessed several cases of excessive risk-taking that frequently have been attributed to problematic professional norms. We conduct experiments with employees from several banks in which we manipulate the saliency of their professional identity and...

We conducted an experiment with middle and high school students to test the external validity of a common laboratory measure of cheating. Subjects performed several coin tosses and earned money depending on the outcomes they reported. Because the coin tosses were not monitored, subjects faced a...

We study whether employment history can provide information about a worker's non-cognitive skills - in particular, about "work attitude", or the ability to work well and cooperatively with others. We conjecture that, holding all else equal, a worker's frequent job changes can indicate poorer...

In recent years, the banking industry has witnessed several cases of excessive risk-taking that frequently have been attributed to problematic professional norms. We conduct experiments with employees from several banks in which we manipulate the saliency of their professional identity and...

We conducted a randomized field experiment to examine how workers respond to wage cuts, and whether their response depends on the wages paid to coworkers. Workers were assigned to teams of two, performed identical individual tasks, and received the same performance - independent hourly wage....