In a 1-year randomized controlled trial involving thousands of university students, we provide real-time private feedback on relative performance in a semester-long online assignment. Within this setup, our experimental design cleanly identifies the behavioral response to rank incentives (i.e.,...

Using life-history survey data from eleven European countries, we investigate whether childhood conditions, such as socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities and health problems influence portfolio choice and risk attitudes later in life. After controlling for the corresponding conditions in...

We explore experimentally how power asymmetries between partners affect relationship-specific investments. We find that on average players' investments are larger than equilibrium investments. In contrast to social dilemma experiments, in our experiment preferences for social welfare and those...

We study a situation where two players first choose a sharing rule, then invest into a joint production process, and then split joint benefits. We investigate how social preferences determine investments. In our experiment we find that even the materially disadvantaged player cares more for...

Gender peer effects are potentially important for optimally organizing schools and neighborhoods. In this paper, we examine how the gender of classmates and neighbors affects a variety of high school outcomes and choice of university major. Given that students are assigned to schools based on...

Would you prefer a tighter or a prolonged exam schedule? Would you prefer to take Math before Reading or the other way around? We exploit variation in end-of-course exam schedules across years and grades to identify distinct effects of the number of days between exams, the number of days since...

Why are females compared to males both more likely to have strong STEM-related performance and less likely to study STEM later on? We exploit random assignment of students to classrooms in Greece to identify the impact of comparative advantage in STEM relative to non-STEM subjects on STEM...

Human capital can depreciate if skills are unused. But estimating human capital depreciation is challenging, as worker skills are difficult to measure and less productive workers are more likely to spend time in non-employment. We overcome these challenges with new administrative data on...

In several countries, students who fail end-of-high-school high-stakes exams are faced with the choice of retaking them or forgoing postsecondary education. We explore exogenous variation generated by a 2006 policy that imposed a performance threshold for admission into postsecondary education...

In several countries, students who fail end-of-high-school high-stakes exams are faced with the choice of retaking them or forgoing postsecondary education. We explore exogenous variation generated by a 2006 policy that imposed a performance threshold for admission into postsecondary education...