It is standard in agency theory to search for incentive-compatible mechanisms on the assumption that people care only about their own material wealth. Yet it may be useful to consider social forces in mechanism design and contract theory. We devise an experiment to explore optimal contracts in a...

Considerable experimental evidence suggests that non-pecuniary motives must be addressed when modeling behavior in economic contexts. Recent models of non-pecuniary motives can be classified as either altruism-based, equity-based, or reciprocity-based. We estimate and compare leading approaches...

It is standard in agency theory to search for incentive-compatible mechanisms on the assumption that people care only about their own material wealth. Yet it may be useful to consider social preferences in mechanism design and contract theory. We devise an experiment to explore optimal contracts...

We test a mechanism whereby groups are formed endogenously, through the use of voting. Once formed, groups play a public-goods game, where there are economies of scale: in two treatments the social value of an incremental contribution to the group account increases with the size of the group,...

We consider bargaining in a bipartite network of buyers and sellers, who can only trade with the limited number of people with whom they are connected. Such networks could arise due to proximity issues or restricted communication flows, as with information transmission of job openings, business...

We devise an experiment to explore the effect of different degrees of competition on optimal contracts in a hidden-information context. In our benchmark case, each principal is matched with one agent of unknown type. In our second treatment, a principal can select one of three agents, while in a...

A self-serving bias occurs when people subconsciously alter their perceptions about what is fair or right in a manner that serves their own interests. Perceptions of what is “a fair day’s work for a fair wage†may well vary according to one’s role in the employment...

Participants in experimental games typically can only choose actions, without making comments about other participants’ future actions. In sequential two-person games, we allow first movers to express a preference between responder choices. We find that responder behavior differs...

Do people care about intentions? Good intentions often do not produce good results when a person tries to do something nice for someone else. In this paper, we ask under what circumstances do people pay attention to outcomes and under what circumstances do they focus on intentions. While the...