In this paper, we investigate individuals' investment in status in an environment where no monetary return can possibly be derived from reaching a better relative position. We use a real-effort experiment in which we permit individuals to learn and potentially improve their status (rank). We...

This study uses a three-person gift-exchange game experiment to examine the impact of pay comparisons on effort behavior. We compare effort choices made in a treatment where workers' wages are secret with effort choices made in two 'public wages' treatments. The two 'public wages' treatments...

We investigate the impact of wage comparisons for worker productivity. We present three studies which all use three-person gift-exchange experiments. Consistent with Akerlof and Yellen's (1990) fair wage-effort hypothesis we find that disadvantageous wage discrimination leads to lower efforts...

The recent literature on individual vs. group decisions over risk has brought about divergent results, mainly depending on the institutional rules through which groups take decisions. While some studies where group decisions relied on the majority rule showed no appreciable difference between...

This paper provides laboratory experimental evidence for prevalence of organizational favouritism. It is significantly found that when subjects where put into a situation where they can offer a job to someone then the choice criteria is based on social ties rather than efficiency. Interestingly,...

Behavioral biases are more pronounced for individuals with lower cognitive abilities. This paper examines what connection if any there is between cognitive ability and bidding strategy in second price auctions. Despite truthful revelation being a weakly dominant strategy, previous experiments...

In this paper we investigated group size impact on risk aversion when a majority rule is applied. Drawing on the widely used Holt and Laury’s (2002) lottery pairs, we observed a risky shift for both individual and groups regardless of their size. However, groups choices are shown to be closer...

Workplace peer effects are well documented, but why they arise remains a puzzle. This paper investigates the issue experimentally. Subjects are brought together to perform a real-effort task in a simulated factory environment. Varying the returns to effort by altering free-riding incentives or...

How does job assignment affect fairness concerns between coworkers? We experimentally examine agents’ horizontal fairness concerns in a three-person ultimatum game in which all agents are asked to complete a general knowledge quiz before being assigned to a high productivity or low...

We design an experiment to study the effects of dark trading on incentives to acquire costly information, price efficiency, market liquidity, and investors' earnings in a financial market. When the information precision is high, adding a dark pool alongside a lit exchange encourages information...