Several important studies of institutions assume that the quality of institutions is persistent following some formative historic event. The assumption of institutional persistence, however, begs the question of how these institutions persisted. To better understand this issue, this paper...

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The paper describes a simple, generic and yet highly accurate Efficient Importance Sampling (EIS) Monte Carlo (MC) procedure for the evaluation of high-dimensional numerical integrals. EIS is based upon a sequence of auxiliary weighted regressions which actually are linear under appropriate...

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We experimentally study decentralized organizational learning. Our objective is to understand how learning members of an organization cope with the confounding effects of the simultaneous learning of others. We test the predictions of a stylized, rational agent model of organizational learning...

We examine how groups of agents form trading networks in the presence of idiosyncratic risk and the possibility of contagion. Specifically, in our model, four agents play a two-stage, finitely repeated game. In the first stage, the network structure is endogenously determined in a noncooperative...

This chapter surveys laboratory experiments addressing macroeconomic phenomena. The first part focuses on experimental tests of the microfoundations of macroeconomic models discussing laboratory studies of intertemporal consumption/savings decisions, time (in)consistency of preferences and...

We investigate conditions under which self-organized criticality (SOC) arises in a version of a dynamic entry game. In the simplest version of the game, there is a single location -- a pool -- and one agent is exogenously dropped into the pool every period. Payoffs to entrants are positive as...

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