To discuss experimental results without discussing how they came about makes sense when the results are robust to the way experiments are conducted. Experimental results, however, are – arguably more often than not – sensitive to numerous design and implementation characteristics such as the...

Are communication failures common? We revisit classic examples of coordination failure and explore experimentally, in a 2x2 design, the effects of deviation costs and loss aversion. Our results add to our understanding of how to engineer coordination successes in the laboratory

Recently, it has been argued that the evidence in social science research suggests that deceiving subjects in an experiment does not lead to a significant loss of experimental control. Based on this assessment, experimental economists were counseled to lift their de facto prohibition against...

I present a brief classroom demonstration illustrating Bertrand price undercutting. The classroom demonstration is appropriate for Micro Principles, and both intermediate and upper level undergraduate, as well as graduate classes in micro, Industrial Organization, and Game Theory

In this paper we address an asymmetric information problem in the fundraising industry, the fundraising problem. The problem arises from donors' lack of information about the quality of charities that solicit donations. We focus on one particular solution of this problem, certification, where an...

We analyze tournaments of heterogeneous players from an organizer's perspective. Using a simple model of a noisy tournament, we demonstrate how the likelihood of selecting the best player, here termed the "predictive power" of a tournament, depends on the tournament format, the distribution of...

Theory and empirics suggest that by curbing competition, incumbent electricity companies which used to be and here are referred to as Vertically Integrated Utilities (VIUs), can increase their profitability through combined ownership of generation and transmission and/or distribution networks....