Facing a stochastic market wage, which is independent of their own hiring policy, employersoffer contracts specifying fixed wage, revenue share and employment duration.In ongoing employment relations it depends on the treatment whether fixed wages canbe only increased or also decreased. Will the...

Two firms compete on a sales market as well as in hiring labor. The duopolists'sales levels depend on their workforce. There are two each of two typesof workers, mobile and immobile, with differing effort costs. An immobileworker's eort costs are lower when he is employed by the local firm,...

In this paper we study the robustness of the deadline effect in bargaininggames using constant and slowly decreasing pies, different time horizons,and both constant and alternating role modes. With decreasing pies efficiency requires early agreements while constant pies allow for efficient late...

Loewenstein (1996, 2005) identifies an intrapersonal empathy gap. In the respectiveexperiments, subjects make choices with delayed consequences. When enteringthe state where these consequences would unfold, they get the possibility to revisetheir initial choice. Revisions are more substantial...

The existing literature acknowledges that a mismatch between the experimenter'sand the subjects' models of an experimental task can adversely aect the interpretation ofdata from laboratory experiments. We discuss why the two common experimental designs(between-subjects and within-subjects) used...

In line with the widely applied principle of just deserts, we assume that the severityof the penalty on a contract offender increases in the harm on the other. Whenthis principle holds, the influence of the efficiency of the agreement on the incentivesto abide by it crucially depends on whether...

We consider guilt averse agents and principals and study the effects ofguilt on optimal behavior of the principal and the agent in a moral hazardmodel.The principal’s contract proposal contains a target effort in addition tothe monetary incentive scheme. By accepting the agreement, the...

We experimentally analyze consoumers' reaction to insurance default risk. Consistent with eralier studies, we find that insurance with default risk is extremely unattractive to most individuals. A considerable fraction of consumers completely refuse to accept any default risk; others ask for...

Previous studies have shown that decision makers are less other-regardingwhen their own payoff is risky than when it is sure. Empirical observationsalso indicate that people care more about identifiable than unidentifiableothers. In this paper, we report on an experiment designed to...

Standard economic explanations of good conduct in trade rely almostexclusively on future-directed extrinsic motivations induced by materialincentives. But intrinsic motives to behave trustworthy and to punishuntrustworthiness do support trade. In our model, intrinsically motivatedplayers are...