This paper tests whether staying ignorant about the negative consequences of one's own actions affects agents' performance in a real effort experiment. We conducted treatments in which subjects' effort either increased only one's own payoff or also increased the donation to a bad charity....

This paper is about accidents involving two risk-neutral parties. Both parties engage in actions that are profitable but affect the magnitude of possible bilateral accidents. The authors analyze how the action choices can be decentralized by liability rules that assign the accident costs. If the...

A risk-neutral principal wishes to exact a payment from a risk-neutral agent whose wealth he does not know, but may verify thro ugh a costly auditing procedure. The authors characterize efficient s chemes for the principal when he is allowed to choose schedules for p reaudit and postaudit...

This paper presents a model in which relative standing determines standards. There are three kinds of agents in the model: candidates who wish to pass a test, members of the elite who have passed the test, and the judge who decides who passes. In order to pass, a candidate's performance must be...

The authors introduce a new solution concept, divine equilibrium, which refines the set of sequential equilibria in signaling games by requiring that off-the-equilibrium-path beliefs satisfy an additional restriction. This restriction rules out implausible sequential equilibria in examples....