One may hope to capture the behavioral and emotional eects of downsizingthe labor force in rather abstract settings as an ultimatum game (see Fischeret al. (2008)), or try to explore downsizing in its more natural principalagentscenario with a labor market background. We pursue the latter...

One-shot interaction and repeated interaction often co-exist in the real world. We study possible behavioral effects of this co-existence in a principal-agent setting, in which a principal simultaneously employs a permanent and a temporary agent. Our experimental results indicate that there is...

We experimentally test whether intentional and observable discriminatorypay of symmetric agents in the Winter (2004) game causes lowpaid agents to reduce effort. We control for intentionality of wages byeither allowing a principal to determine wages or by implementing arandom process. Our main...

The higher our aspirations, the higher the probability that we have to adjust them downwards when forming more realistic expectations later on. This paper shows that the costs induced by high aspirations are not trivial. We first develop a theoretical framework to identify the factors that...

This paper analyzes dynamic equilibrium risk sharing contracts between profit-maximizing intermediaries and a large pool of ex-ante identical agents that face idiosyncratic income uncertainty that makes them heterogeneous ex-post. In any given period, after having observed her income, the agent...

This paper incorporates aspects of humans’ evolved cognition into a formal model of culturalevolution and scrutinizes their interactions with population-level processes. It is shown how thebiased transmission of different kinds of behavior via cultural learning processes influencesagents’...

This paper shows how sustainable consumption patterns can spread within a population viaprocesses of social learning even though a strong individual learning bias may favorenvironmentally harmful products. We present a model depicting how the biased transmission ofdifferent behaviors via...

The higher our aspirations, the higher the probability that we have toadjust them downwards when forming more realistic expectations later on.This paper shows that the costs induced by high aspirations are not trivial.We first develop a theoretical framework to identify the factors that...

We propose an experimental design allowing a behavioral test of the axiom ofcompleteness of individual preferences. The central feature of our design consistsin enabling subjects to postpone commitment at a small cost. Our main result isthat preferences are significantly incomplete. We use...