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...

Information sharing has become increasingly important in helping consumers make better, more informed choices over competing products. Our project uses a novel theoretical framework and laboratory experiments to analyze three simple, commonly used incentive schemes against an unincentivized...

When grades lose their informative value because the percentage of students receiving the best grade rises without any corresponding increase in ability, this is called grade inflation. Conventional wisdom says that such grade inflation is unavoidable since it is essentially costless to award...

This paper reports on a lab-in-the-field experiment that investigates differences in rule-violating behavior between the inmates of juvenile detention centers and regular adolescents from primary schools of similar age in response to three specific contexts: (i) when they interact with ingroup...

We investigate the credibility of non-binding pre-play statements about cooperative behavior, using data from a high-stakes TV game show in which contestants play a variant on the classic Prisoner's Dilemma. We depart from the conventional binary approach of classifying statements as promises or...

We analyze how the gender composition of teams affects team interactions. In an online experiment, we randomly assign individuals to gender-homogenous or gender-mixed teams. Teams meet in an audio chat room and jointly work on a gender-neutral team task. By design, effects on team performance...

We investigate the effects of pay comparison information (i.e. information about what co-workers earn) and effort comparison information (information about how co-workers perform) in experimental firms composed of one employer and two employees. Exposure to pay comparison information in...

This paper investigates how social comparison information about referent others (i.e. learning what similar others do and how they are treated) affects reciprocal relationships. Using a three-person gift-exchange game we study how employees' reciprocity towards an employer is affected by...