We analyze experimental evidence on whether untrained subjects can predict how trustworthy an individual is. Two players on a TV show play a high stakes prisoner's dilemma with pre-play communication. Our subjects report probabilistic beliefs that each player cooperates, before and after...

We provide experimental evidence on the ability to detect deceit in the ‘Lemon Game’: a buyer-seller game with asymmetric information. Sellers have private information about the value of a good and sometimes have incentives to mislead buyers. We examine if buyers can spot deception in...

We analyze behavior on a TV game show where players' earnings depend upon several factors. Attractive players fare better than less attractive ones, even though they perform no differently on every dimension. They also exhibit and engender the same degree of cooperativeness. Nevertheless, they...

This study presents evidence from a field experiment on the prevalence of favoritism among children. Children compete in groups in a tournament in a real effort experiment with two rounds. The children report which group member they prefer to do the task in the second round, providing them with...

We study the role of communication in a high stakes prisoner's dilemma, using data from a television game show. 40 Percent of the players voluntarily promise to cooperate, and these players are 50 percentage points more likely to cooperate than players who do not volunteer a promise. However,...

We study the incentives of parents to invest in their children when these investments improve their marriage prospects, in a frictionless marriage market with non-transferable utility. Stochastic returns to investment eliminate the multiplicity of equilibria that plagues models with...

We consider a society where parents prefer boys to girls, but also value grandchildren. Parental sex selection results in a biased sex ratio that is socially inefficient, due to a congestion externality in the marriage market. Improvements in selection techniques aggravate the inefficiency....

We study dynamic moral hazard where principal and agent are symmetrically uncertain about job difficulty. Since effort is unobserved, shirking leads the principal to believe that the job is hard, increasing the agent's continuation value. So deterring shirking requires steeper incentives, which...

We study dynamic moral hazard, with symmetric ex ante uncertainty and learning. Unlike Holmstrom's career concerns model, uncertainty pertains to the difficulty of the job rather than the general talent of the agent, so that contracts are required to provide incentives. Since effort is privately...

We examine buyer strategic power in the model of dynamic Bertrand-Edgeworth competition. Two sellers with a limited inventory sell to a single buyer, who has a consumption opportunity in each period. The market power of the sellers is offset by the strategic power of the buyer. By not consuming...