In economics, the standard approach to language is that talk is cheap. Here, instead, language is a social convention that affects utility. Unless language is used in its ordinary sense, it cannot help to coordinate actions because there is no way of decoding it. This points to a unique...

During the 1980s a set of randomized experiments were carried out to determine the usefulness of a mandatory arrest policy for domestic assault offenders. The first of these was the Minneapolis Domestic Violence experiment (MDVE), which was carried out in 1981. This paper re-examines the data...

Traditionally economic theory assumes that preferences are stable facilitating positive predictions of economic policy. While there is conflicting experimental evidence on the temporal stability of cooperation preferences in public goods provision, surprisingly little is known about their...

Large accounting firms offshore a significant amount of tax work to professionals in India. Prior research suggests that individuals can have negative implicit attitudes toward people from different nationalities and that negative implicit attitudes can have undesired consequences. In this...

We study the results of a massive nationwide correspondence experiment sending more than 83,000 fictitious applications with randomized characteristics to geographically dispersed jobs posted by 108 of the largest U.S. employers. Distinctively Black names reduce the probability of employer...