We report an experimental test of alternative rules in innovation contests when success may not be feasible and contestants may learn from each other. Following Halac et al. (forthcoming), the contest designer can vary the prize allocation rule from Winner-Take-All in which the first successful...

We experimentally study the profitability of pricing mechanisms that allow customers to quote their own prices, such as Priceline.com's Name-Your-Own-Price (NYOP). Presumably firms find this sales method profit-maximizing despite the concerns that NYOP web-sites can cannibalize profit from...

Zone pricing in wholesale gasoline markets is a contentious topic in the public policy debate. Refiners contend that they use zone pricing to be competitive with local rivals. Critics claim that zone pricing benefits the oil industry and harms consumers. With a controlled experiment, we...

We report an experiment designed to investigate markets with consumer search costs. In markets where buyers are matched with one seller at a time, sellers are predicted to sell at prices equal to buyers' valuations. However, we find sellers post prices that offer a more equal division of the...

This paper provides a behavioral foundation for the willpower as limited cognitive resource model which bridges the standard utility maximization and the Strotz models. Using the agent's ex ante preferences and ex post choices, we derive a representation that captures key behavioral traits of...

For the Euro 2000 Soccer Championships an experimental asset market was condueted, with traders buying and selling contracts on the winners of individual matches. Market-generated probabilities are compared to professional bet quotas, and factors that are responsible for the quality of the...

We study the effects of price matching in a setting in which each firm selects both its price and output, simultaneously. We show that the availability of a price-matching option leads to the Cournot outcome in this setting. Our experimental study confirms this result in the laboratory. Our...