The psychology literature provides ample evidence that people have difficulties taking the perspective of less informed others. This paper presents a controlled experiment showing that this "curse of knowledge" can cause comparative overconfidence and overentry into competition. In a broader...

Mobility of high income individuals across borders puts pressure on governments to lower taxes. A central tenet of the underlying theoretical and empirical models is that mobile individuals react to tax differentials through migration, and in turn immobile households vote for lower taxes in the...

We develop a model to analyze the determinants and effects of an endogenous imperfect transferability of human capital on natives and immigrants. The model reveals that high migration flows and high skill-transferability are mutually interdependent. Moreover, we show that high mobility within a...

We study private communication in social networks prior to a majority vote on two alternative policies. Some (or all) agents receive a private imperfect signal about which policy is correct. They can, but need not, recommend a policy to their neighbors in the social network prior to the vote. We...

Quotas for special groups of students often apply in school or university admission procedures. This paper studies the performance of two mechanisms to implement such quotas in a lab experiment. The fi rst mechanism is a simplifi ed version of the mechanism currently employed by the German...