This paper reports experiments conducted to test whether ambiguity affects individual behaviour in games of strategic complements and strategic substitutes. We study subject behaviour in the presence of ambiguity in order to ascertain whether subjects' perception of ambiguity differs between a...

In this paper we analyze the behavioral consequences of transparent wage distributions on workers' motivation. We study a simple gift-exchange game with one principal and three agents in two different treatments. In the first treatment, agents are not informed about their co-workers' wages and...

The theory of compensating differentials has proven difficult to test with observational data: the consequences of selection, unobserved firm and worker characteristics, and the broader macroeconomic environment complicate most analyses. Instead, we construct experimental, real-effort labor...

Ethnic networks are a way of overcoming informal barriers to trade such as information costs, risk, and uncertainty by building trust and by substituting for the difficulty of enforcing contracts internationally. We study networks which emerge from the interaction (i) between migrants and...

The majority of labor transactions throughout much of history and a significant fraction of such transactions in many developing countries today are “coercive,” in the sense that force or the threat of force plays a central role in convincing workers to accept employment or its terms. We...

Information asymmetries can prevent markets from operating efficiently. An important example is the labor market, where employers face uncertainty about the productivity of job candidates. We examine theoretically and with laboratory experiments three key questions related to hiring via...