This paper seeks to contribute to institutional theory by providing it with a stronger basis in cognitive and affective psychology. We organise this contribution around the central question of what psychological preconditions must exist for institutions to determine behaviour and order our...

We study how individuals’ willingness to delegate choice is affected by heterogeneity in identity between the delegee and the delegate. While it is straightforward that such heterogeneity can affect delegation for instrumental reasons, we show experimentally that divergent identity also causes...

Many employers have increased the default contribution rates in their retirement plans, generating higher employee savings. However, a large fraction of employers are reluctant to default employees into savings rates that are high enough to leave those employees adequately prepared for...

Online media platforms such as Spotify, YouTube Music, and NetEase Cloud Music rely on long-term user engagement for revenue generation. The primary operational level under their control is content recommendation (i.e., what content to recommend to various users), where the right recommendation...

This paper analyzes grading competition between instructors of elective courses when students shop for high course scores, the instructors maximize class size, and the school imposes a ceiling on mean course scores to limit grade inflation. Under this grading norm, we demonstrate that curriculum...

That institutions matter is widely accepted among economists and so are social norms as an important category of informal institutions. Social norms matter in many economic situations, but in particular for markets. The economic literature has studied the interrelation between markets and social...

That institutions matter is widely accepted among economists and so are social norms as an important category of informal institutions. Social norms matter in many economic situations, but in particular for markets. The economic literature has studied the interrelation between markets and social...

If people think or expect that others are kind, ethical or fair, are they more likely to be kind, ethical and fair in their own judgments and behaviors? Answering this question is difficult because of the confluence of individual, institutional and other-regarding factors that affect ethical...

We conduct an experiment where subjects are matched in groups of three and vote on a moral transgression. Analyzing different voting rules, the frequency of votes for the moral transgression increases with the number of votes required for it. This effect persists when considering pivotal votes...

We conduct an experiment where subjects are matched in groups of three and vote on a moral transgression. Analyzing different voting rules, the frequency of votes for the moral transgression increases with the number of votes required for it. This effect persists when considering pivotal votes...