In a social network in which friendly and rival bilateral links can be formed, how do alliances between decision-makers form, and what determines whether a conflict will arise? We study a network formation game between ex-ante symmetric players in the laboratory to examine the dynamics of...

The narrowing wage gap between high and low skilled workers in the Chinese labor market in recent years is suggestive of government interventions which may have been implemented in the capital markets. We develop a game theoretic model between a continuum of heterogeneous workers and the...

Facing lengthening lifespans and economic concerns, workers and governments are increasingly considering the possibility of delayed retirement ages. However, the postponement of retirement may not be universally feasible, since not all workers may be willing and able to continue working past the...

Evidence increasingly points to the importance of reference-dependence in predicting consumer behavior. We utilize detailed data from penny auctions, which first appeared as an internet phenomenon in the late 2000's, to uncover how consumers' prior experiences predict their willingness to try a...

Collective knowledge is significantly affected by information about others’ viewpoints. However, under what conditions does the “wisdom of crowds” help versus harm knowledge of factual information? In this experiment, we present subjects with the task of answering 50 factual true or false...

Although contests are recognized theoretically as a highly effective method of motivation, the competitive nature of contests may generate unintended negative effects on social interactions in more general settings beyond contests. Using a laboratory experiment of real effort tasks with...

We examine the effect of contract-based incentives on the performance of NBA players using data from the 2004-05 to 2014-15 seasons. We find support for a contract year effect, meaning that players in the last season of their current contract improve their performance in order to secure better...

Major natural disasters are often life-changing events, capable of potentially altering the economic behavior of those who experience it first-hand. We investigate the impact of experiencing a major earthquake on individuals’ investment and consumption expenditure shares using the major...

We study a hierarchical Bayesian persuasion game with a sender, a receiver, and several potential intermediaries, generalizing the framework of Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011). The sender must be persuasive through a hierarchy of intermediaries to reach the final receiver, whose action affects all...