This paper presents the results of an experimental study on unemployment benefit sanctions. The experimental set-up allows us to distinguish between the effect of benefit sanctions once they are imposed (the ex post effect) and the effect that unemployed want to avoid getting a benefit sanction...

We analyze the effect of income taxation with limited loss deduction on investment decisions. An experiment with five treatments was conducted, one without taxation as a reference and four with taxation and limited loss compensation. The participants' task was to repeatedly choose one out of two...

In spring 2000, the British government auctioned off licences for Third Generation mobile telecommunications services. In the preparation of the auction, two designs involving each a hybrid of an English and a sealed-bid auction were suggested by the government: a discriminatory and a uniform...

updated version of paper no 55

Overconfidence is a well-established behavioral phenomenon that involves an overestimation of own capabilities. We introduce a model, in which managers and agents exert effort in a joint production, after the manager decides on the allocation of the tasks. A rational manager tends to delegate...

We present a field experiment to assess the effect of own and peer wage variations on actual work effort of employees with hourly wages. Work effort neither reacts to an increase of the own wage, nor to a positive or negative peer comparison. This result seems at odds with numerous laboratory...

Numerous laboratory experiments show that workers reciprocate to high wages with high effort, when there is perfect information on the surplus created. Recent field experiments, however, suggest that trust and reciprocity may be lower or absent when the information is incomplete. We report a...

We introduce a new method of varying the risk that bidders face in first-price private value auctions. We find that decreasing bidders' risk significantly reduces the degree of overbidding relative to the risk-neutral Bayesian-Nash equilibrium prediction. This implies that risk affects bidding...

In laboratory experiments, we compare the performance of short-term and long-term contracts in a two-period supplier–buyer dyad with asymmetric cost information. We find that buyers tend to reject offers if the payoff inequality increases from one period to the next. We coin this dynamic form...

Two of the top economics journals have institutional ties to a specific university, the Quarterly Journal of Economics (QJE) to Harvard University and the Journal of Political Economy (JPE) to the University of Chicago. Researchers from Harvard, but also nearby Massachusetts Institute of...