Many basic economic theories with perfectly functioning markets do not predict the existence of the vast number of microenterprises readily observed across the world. We put forward a model that illuminates why financial and managerial capital constraints may impede experimentation, and thus...

Many basic economic theories with perfectly functioning markets do not predict the existence of the vast number of microenterprises readily observed across the world. We put forward a model that illuminates why financial and managerial capital constraints may impede experimentation, and thus...

Despite evidence that delayed exit is a pervasive and consequential problem, relatively little is known about its causes. Moreover, the study of exit delay is confounded by the fact that behavioral theories arising in the literature on escalation of commitment and economic theories that...

Prior work in business experimentation concludes that involving other stakeholders besides the entrepreneur mitigates the challenge of biased experimental decision-making. However, this work also maintains a key simplifying assumption—that the actors involved have a common goal to maximize...

I study how a forward-looking decision maker experiments on unknown alternatives of spatially correlated utilities modeled by a Brownian motion so that similar alternatives yield similar utilities. For example, a firm experiments on its size that yields unknown, spatially correlated...

This article explains the supra-competitive profits observed in Calvano et al.(2020) and subsequent literature. We refute the idea that the phenomenon arises from collusive mechanisms, where each agent exerts the threat of punishment. Instead, our analysis reveals that the high prices and...

We discuss the literatures on behavioral economics, bounded rationality and experimental economics as they apply to firm behaviour in markets. Topics discussed include the impact of imitative and satisficing behavior by firms, outcomes when managers care about their position relative to peers,...

A large and growing literature has demonstrated that explicit incentives, such as enforceable contracts, can lead agents to withhold effort. We investigate when this behavioral result arises. In an extensive laboratory experiment, we find that imposing control through an enforceable contract is...

Work and trade relationships are often governed by relational contracts, in which incentives for cooperative action today stem from the prospective future benefits of the relationship. In this paper, we study how reductions in clarity about the financial consequences of actions, induced by...

Work and trade relationships are often governed by relational contracts, in which incentives for cooperative action today stem from the prospective future benefits of the relationship. In this paper, we study how reductions in clarity about the financial consequences of actions, induced by...