Theory predicts that default breach remedies are immaterial whenever contracting costs are negligible. Some experimental studies, however, suggest that in practice default rules do matter, as they may affect parties' preferences over contract terms. This paper presents results from an experiment...

Incentive instruments like asset ownership and performance pay often have to strike a balance between the productive incentives and the rent-seeking incentives they provide. Standard theory predicts that these instruments become less attractive when the effectiveness of rent-seeking activities...

This discussion paper has led to a publication in the <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0014292110000978">'European Economic Review'</A>, 55(5), 630-43.<p>Incentive instruments like asset ownership and performance pay often have to strike a balance between the productive incentives and the rent-seeking incentives they provide. Standard theory predicts...</p></a>

Theory predicts that default breach remedies are immaterial whenever contracting costs are negligible. Some experimental studies, however, suggest that in practice default rules do matter, as they may affect parties' preferences over contract terms. This paper presents results from an experiment...

One of the main findings of a large body of gift exchange experiments is that in an incomplete contracts environment workers on average do not shirk and usually provide more than the minimum enforceable effort level. In general, 40 to 60 percent of the workers reward higher wages with higher...

Numerous gift exchange experiments have found a positive relationship between employers' wage offers and workers' effort levels. In (almost) all these experiments the employer both owns and controls the firm. Yet in reality many firms are characterized by the separation of ownership and control....

We consider repeated trust game experiments to study the interplay between explicit and relational incentives. After having gained experience with two payoff variations of the trust game, subjects in the final part explicitly choose which of these two variants to play. Theory predicts that...