We use experiments to test comparative statics predictions of canonical tournament theory. Both the roles of principal and agent are populated by human subjects, allowing us to test predictions for both incentive responses and optimal tournament design. Consistent with theory, we observed an...

With the help of lab experiments we study the impact of discharging insolvent debtors of their residual debt. We investigate the impact of different participation rules and the impact of different types of lenders. We find that higher participation rates encourage risk taking behaviour of...

We investigate whether and how social ties affect performance in teams by implementing a field experiment in which a sample of undergraduate students are randomly assigned to either teams composed by friends or teams composed by individuals not linked by friendship relationships. Students...

Before embarking on a project, a principal must often rely on an agent to learn about its profitability. We model this learning as a two-armed bandit problem and highlight the interaction between learning (experimentation) and production. We derive the optimal contract for both experimentation...

Before embarking on a project, a principal must often rely on an agent to learn about its profitability. We model this learning as a two-armed bandit problem and highlight the interaction between learning (experimentation) and production. We derive the optimal contract for both experimentation...

We examine the nature of contracts that optimally reward innovations in a risky environment, when the innovator is privately informed about the quality of her innovation and must engage an agent to develop it. We model the innovator as a principal who has private but imperfect information about...

Motivated by markets for ''expertise,'' we study a bandit model where a principal chooses between a safe and risky arm. A strategic agent controls the risky arm and privately knows whether its type is high or low. Irrespective of type, the agent wants to maximize duration of experimentation with...

A central insight of agency theory is that when a principal offers a contract to a privately informed agent, the principal trades off ex post efficiency in the bad state of nature against a larger profit in the good state of nature. We report about an experiment with 508 participants designed to...

As we have demonstrated in a recent laboratory experiment [see Sebald and Walzl (2012)], individuals tend to sanction others who subjectively evaluate their performance whenever this assessment falls short of the individual's self-evaluation even if their earnings are unaffected by the...

We conduct a laboratory experiment with agents working on and principals benefitting from a real effort task in which the agents' performance can only be evaluated subjectively. Principals give subjective performance feedback to agents and agents have an opportunity to sanction principals. In...