The 'ratchet effect' refers to a situation where a principal uses private information that is revealed by an agent's early actions to the agent's later disadvantage, in a context where binding multi-period contracts are not enforceable. In a simple, context-rich environment, we experimentally...

The ‘ratchet effect’ refers to a situation where a principal uses private information that is revealed by an agent’s early actions to the agent’s later disadvantage, in a context where binding multi-period contracts are not enforceable. In a simple, context-rich environment, we...

We ask if corporate executives have fixed effects (quirks) that explain perational decisions made in firms, independent of firm effects. We replicate the approach in Bertrand et al. (2003), solving the empirical challenge of distinguishing firm and executive effects by constructing a dataset of...

The 'ratchet effect' refers to a situation where a principal uses private information that is revealed by an agent's early actions to the agent's later disadvantage, in a context where binding multi-period contracts are not enforceable. In a simple, context-rich environment, we experimentally...

In this paper, we examine the significance and uniqueness of individual-pair relationships cultivated through repeated loan interactions. Using a hand-collected dataset compiled of borrowing manager and loan officer information, we find that individual-pair relationship loans are associated with...

We ask if corporate executives have fixed effects (quirks) that explain perational decisions made in firms, independent of firm effects. We replicate the approach in Bertrand et al. (2003), solving the empirical challenge of distinguishing firm and executive effects by constructing a dataset of...

Should employers disclose their assessments of their employees? Popular managerial advice suggests that telling employees that they are assessed to have high potential leads to greater effort and engagement, boosting firm profits. However, some employers still choose to withhold employee...

The 'ratchet effect' refers to a situation where a principal uses private information that is revealed by an agent's early actions to the agent's later disadvantage, in a context where binding multi-period contracts are not enforceable. In a simple, context-rich environment, we experimentally...

We run a field experiment to investigate whether competing in rank-order tournaments with different prize spreads affects individual performance. Our experiment involved students from an Italian University who took an intermediate exam in which one part was awarded on the basis of their relative...