Despite a vast theoretical literature that builds on costly information acquisition, there is no direct evidence on the importance of information costs in investors’ private information choices. Using a large sample of Chinese mutual fund managers’ visits to firm headquarters and exploiting...

An advisor is supposed to recommend a financial product in the best interest of her client. However, the best product for the client may not always be the product yielding the highest commission (paid by product providers) to the advisor. Do advisors nevertheless provide truthful advice? If not,...

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...

This paper presents the results of a laboratory experiment in which workers perform a real-effort task and supervisors report the workers' performance to the experimenter. The report is non verifiable and determines the earnings of both the supervisor and the worker. We find that not all the...

An advisor is supposed to recommend a financial product in the best interest of her client. However, the best product for the client may not always be the product yielding the highest commission to the advisor. Do advisors nevertheless provide truthful advice? If not, will a voluntary or...

The market for retail financial products (e.g. investment funds or insurance) is marred by information asymmetries. Clients are not well informed about the quality of these products. They have to rely on the recommendations of advisors. Incentives of advisors and clients may not be aligned, when...

The market for retail financial products (e.g. investment funds or insurances) is marred by information asymmetries. Clients are not well informed about the quality of these products. They have to rely on the recommendations of advisors. Incentives of advisors and clients may not be aligned,...

This paper presents the results of a laboratory experiment in which workers perform a real-effort task and supervisors report the workers' performance to the experimenter. The report is non verifiable and determines the earnings of both the supervisor and the worker. We find that not all the...

I study the role of financial incentives as signals of job characteristics when these are unknown to potential applicants. To this end, I create experimental variation in expected earnings and use that to estimate the effect of financial incentives on candidates' perception of a brand-new...

The article is concerned with understanding the impact of social preferences and wealth inequality on aggregate economic outcomes. We investigate how different manifestations of societal other-regarding preferences affect labor relationships and incentive contracts at the microeconomic level and...