This paper studies the impact of incentives on worker self-selection in a controlled laboratory experiment. In a first step we elicit subjects' productivity levels. Subjects then face the choice between a fixed or a variable payment scheme. Depending on the treatment, the variable payment is...

We use a laboratory experiment to examine whether and to what extent other-regarding preferences of team leaders influence their leadership style in choice under risk. We find that leaders who prefer efficiency or report high levels of selfishness are more likely to exercise an autocratic...

We propose an experimental method to test individuals for prudence (i.e. downside risk aversion) outside the expected utility framework. Our method relies on a novel representation of compound lotteries which allows for a systematic parameterization that captures the full generality of prudence....

This paper compares two prominent empirical measures of individual risk attitudes - the Holt and Laury (2002) lottery-choice task and the multi-item questionnaire advocated by Dohmen, Falk, Huffman, Schupp, Sunde and Wagner (forthcoming) - with respect to (a) their correlation with actual...

In this paper we propose a new method to elicit the intensity of individual's risk preferences. Our method uses a simple multiple price-list format and is based on the increasing risk definitions of Rothschild and Stiglitz (1970, 1971). We are thus able to classify individuals as more or less...

This experimental study is concerned with the impact of the timing of the resolution of risk on people's willingness to take risks, with a special focus on the role of affect. While the importance of anticipatory emotions has so far been only inferred from decisions regarding hypothetical choice...

The paper analyses on an experimental basis the phenomenon of non-optimal under-diversification in portfolio choice decisions and investigates the reasons behind it. The most important obstacles for optimal diversification are studied the correlation neglect hypothesis and the overconfidence...

Preference for control affects investment behavior. Participants of laboratory experiments invest different amount of money in a risky asset when face with two different methods of control which have identical payoff structure and probability distribution, but provide different sense of control....

Several models of choice under uncertainty imply systematic violations of transitivity of preference. Our experiments explored whether people show patterns of intransitivity predicted by these models. To distinguish "true" violations from those produced by "error", a model was fit in which each...

The St. Petersburg Paradox is one of the oldest violations of expected utility theory. Thus far, explanations of the paradox aim at small probabilities being perceived as zero and the boundedness of utility. This paper provides experimental results showing that neither risk attitudes nor...