We analyse the role of uncertainty in a sequential game where players have to decide whether to contribute to a public project or not. A player's payoff may depend on his belief about the other player's action which allows us to model social pressure. Using the theory of psychological games, we...

In developing countries, traditional social obligations often press rich individuals to share their income. In this paper, we posit a "model of social pressure" in which people can sign binding financial agreements amongst themselves, thereby forming coalitions. These financial agreements may...

L’objectif de cet article est d’analyser l’efficacité des mécanismes d’incitation au remboursement utilisés dans le microcrédit individuel, et, en particulier, le mécanisme du garant. Peu de recherches académiques ont été consacrées à cet instrument alors même alors que son...

Using individual level data (the Japanese General Social Survey), this paper aims to explore how interaction between genders contributes to the cessation of smoking in Japan, where females are distinctly less inclined to smoke than males. Controlling for various socioeconomic factors and...

We study the behavior of football (soccer) referees in the German Bundesliga. Referees are requested to act as impartial agents. However, they may be tempted to allocate benefits and rewards in a biased way. Agency theory has long neglected this form of malfeasance of economic agents, but has...

In developing countries, traditional social obligations often press rich individuals to share their income. In this paper, we posit a "model of social pressure" in which people can sign binding financial agreements amongst themselves, thereby forming coalitions. These financial agreements may...

This paper studies how social pressure affects the behavior of soccer referees. We make use of an attractive source of exogenous variation in the number of spectators at matches. Due to recent hooligan violence, the Italian government has implemented a regulation that forces some soccer teams to...

This paper studies the aggregate distribution of declared opin- ions and behavior when heterogeneous individuals make the trade- off between being true to their private opinions and conforming to an endogenous social norm. The model sheds light on how various punishment regimes induce conformity...

This paper surveys the empirical literature on the behavior of referees in professional football and other sports. Referees are typically appointed by a principal to be impartial, especially when unbiased referee judgment is vital for the accomplishment of the principal's objective. Answering...