Contests are meant to attract the best performers and incentivize high effort, however, they may also attract cheaters who try to win via illicit means which crowds out the best performers. We use a laboratory experiment to explore the role of self-selection in contests with a possibility of...

We study information conditions under which individuals are willing to delegate their sanctioning power to a central authority. We design a public goods game in which players can move between institutional environments, and we vary the observability of others' contributions. We find that the...

We study the effects of voluntary participation on cooperation in collective action problems. Voluntary participation may foster cooperation through a mechanism of assortative selection of interaction partners based on false consensus bias, or through a mechanism whereby the decision to not...

Most research in economics models agents somehow motivated by outcomes. Here, we model agents motivated by procedures instead, where procedures are defined independently of an outcome. To that end, we design procedures which yield the same expected outcomes or carry the same information on...

This paper investigates the impact of insurance contract design on the behavior of filing fraudulent claims in an experimental setup. We test whether or not peoples' fraud behavior varies for insurance contracts with full coverage, a straight deductible or variable premiums (bonus-malus...

We study the effects of voluntary participation on cooperation in collective action problems. Voluntary participation may foster cooperation through an entry mechanism, which leads to assortative selection of interaction partners, or an exit mechanism, whereby the opportunity to leave the...

We study the effects of voluntary participation on public good provision. Voluntary participation may foster cooperation through two mechanisms: an entry mechanism, which leads to assortative selection of interaction partners, or an exit mechanism, whereby the opportunity to leave the...

Debates about affirmative action often revolve around fairness. Accordingly, we document substantial heterogeneity in the fairness perception of various affirmative action policies. But do these differences translate into different consequences? In a laboratory experiment, we study three...

Is the willingness to make trades influenced by how the total gains from trade are split between the trading partners? We present results from a bilateral trade game (n = 128) where all participants were price-takers and trading pairs faced one of three exogenously imposed trading prices. The...

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...