This paper experimentally studies two simple interventions that an authority figure might employ to promote cooperation in a public goods game when accurate feedback about contributions is not available. The first intervention aims to nudge participants to higher contribution levels by labeling...

Bayes' statistical rule remains the status quo for modeling belief updating in both normative and descriptive models of behavior under uncertainty. Some recent research has questioned the use of Bayes' rule in descriptive models of behavior, presenting evidence that people overweight `good news'...

The extensive theoretical and experimental economics literature on lying has focused nearly exclusively on lying for material rewards. However, in everyday interactions, lying to enhance one’s image is ubiquitous and perhaps even more common than lying to gain a financial advantage. In this...

Understanding discrimination is key for designing policy interventions that promote equality in society. Economists have studied the topic intensively, typically taxonomizing discrimination as either taste-based or (accurate) statistical discrimination. To reveal the limitations of this taxonomy...

This paper evaluates the impact of a sudden and unexpected nation-wide alcohol sales ban in South Africa. We find that this policy causally reduced injury-induced mortality in the country by at least 14% during the five weeks of the ban. We argue that this estimate constitutes a lower bound on...

The extensive theoretical and experimental economics literature on lying has focused nearly exclusively on lying for monetary rewards. However, in everyday interactions, lying to enhance one’s image is ubiquitous and perhaps even more common than lying to gain a financial advantage. In this...

An extensive literature documents that people are willing to sacrifice personal material gain to adhere to a moral motive. Yet, less is known about what happens when moral motives are in conflict. We hypothesize that individuals engage in what we term "motive selection," namely adhering to the...

An extensive literature shows that reminders can successfully change behavior. Yet, there exists substantial unexplained heterogeneity in their effectiveness, both: (i) across studies, and (ii) across individuals within a particular study. This paper investigates when and why reminders work. We...

Modern life offers nearly unbridled access to information; it is the harnessing of this information to guide decision-making that presents a challenge. We study how one individual may try to shape the way another person interprets objective information by proposing a causal explanation (or...