We theoretically and experimentally study a college admissions problem in which colleges accept students by ranking students' efforts in entrance exams. Students hold private information regarding their ability level that affects the cost of their efforts. We assume that student preferences are...

This paper studies behavioral responses to taxes in financial markets. It is motivated by recent puzzling empirical evidence of taxable municipal bond yields significantly exceeding the level expected relative to tax exempt bonds. A behavioral explanation is a tax aversion bias, the phenomenon...

Dismissal rules, i.e. legally enforced long term contracts, have beem defended against criticism for, among other things, providing efficient incentives to invest in relationship specific skills. However, in many situations efficient investment can also be attained by spot contracts. We...

The privately informed seller of a company sends a value message to the uninformed potential buyer who then proposes a price for the company. “Make-up” is measured by how much the true value is overstated, “Suspicion” by how much the price offer differs from the value message. Treatments...

Extensive research in economics explores generosity in monetary allocations. However, generosity often involves the allocation of non-monetary goods or experiences. Existing evidence suggests that generosity may be higher in such contexts, though no direct comparison exists. Here, we compare...

Cooperation and competition are both essential elements of economic life. Here we explore how cooperativeness in a prisoner’s dilemma is correlated with competitiveness in a sample of 9-12 year old children in Colombia and Sweden. Using two different measures and four different tasks for...