A popular view of limited liability in financial contracting is that it is the result of societal preferences agnainst excessive penalties. the view of most financial economists is instead that limited liability emerged as an optimal institution when, in the absence of a clear limit on economic...

We experimentally test whether intentional and observable discriminatory pay of symmetric agents in the Winter (2004) game causes low paid agents to reduce effort. We control for intentionality of wages by either allowing a principal to determine wages or by implementing a random process. Our...