Many incentive contracts are inherently ambiguous, lacking an explicit mapping between performance and pay. Using an online labor market, Amazon Mechanical Turk, we study the effect of ambiguous incentives on willingness to accept contracts to do a real-effort task, the probability of completing...

Empirical studies investigating work motivation over time find people with fluctuating wages work more on days when their wage rate is lower compared to when wages are higher. The authors of these studies theorize individuals use daily income goals and stop working once they reach their goal....

We explore the behavior of losers of promotion tournaments after the tournament is concluded. We do so through the use of an experiment in which we vary the design of the promotion tournament to determine how tournament design affects post tournament effort. We provide a theoretical model...

Traditionally, larger than equilibrium allocations by proposers in Dictator Games (gifts) have been explained by aspects of altruism, reciprocity, and fairness. However, this assumes the gift to be mutually desirable to the proposer and responder. Giving may also be driven by a desire of the...

Are productivity increases from small amounts of stress (or shocks) in an economic task dependent upon the content of the shock? It has been found small amounts of stress can lead to an increase in memory. We examine if the same is true with productivity in an economic experiment and whether it...

When there is direct competition for a position of power (promotion, elected office, etc.), competitors are tempted to cheat to increase their chances of winning. If they do so successfully, then how they rationalize their cheating can determine how they treat the losers of the competition. In...