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Emmanuelle Auriol, Diego Delissaint, Maleke Fourati, Josepa Miquel-Florensa, and Paul Seabright

vol. 144, n. 105441, August 2021

We conducted an experimental study in Haiti testing for the relationship between religious belief and individual risk taking behavior. 774 subjects played lotteries in a standard neutral protocol and subsequently with reduced endowments but in the presence of religious images of Catholic,...

Romain Espinosa, and Nicolas Treich

vol. 103, n. 4, August 2021, pp. 1478–1501

NGOs often vary in terms of how radical they are. In this paper, we explore the effectiveness of NGO discourses in bringing about social change. We focus on animal advocacy: welfarist NGOs primarily seek to improve the conditions in which animals are raised and reduce meat consumption, whereas...

Matteo Bobba, Luca Flabbi, Santiago Levy, and Mauricio Tejada

vol. 223, n. 2, August 2021, pp. 433–453

We develop a search and matching model where rms and workers produce output that depends both on match-specic productivity and worker-specic human capital. The human capital is accumulated while working but depreciates while searching for a job. Jobs can be formal or informal. The model is...

Tim Caro, Haji Hamad, Suleiman Rashid, Ulrike Kloiber, Victoria M. Morgan, Ossi Nokelainen, Barnabas Caro, Ilaria Pretelli, Neil Cumberlidge, and Monique Borgerhoff Mulder

vol. 55, n. 4, July 2021, pp. 556–563

The coconut crab Birgus latro, the largest terrestrial decapod, is under threat in most parts of its geographical range. Its life cycle involves two biomes (restricted terrestrial habitats near the coast, and salt water currents of the tropical Indian and Pacific Oceans). Its dependence on coastal...

Johannes Hörner, and Nicolas Lambert

vol. 88, July 2021, pp. 1892–1935

Performance evaluation (“rating”) systems not only provide information to users but also motivate the rated worker. This article solves for the optimal (effort-maximizing) rating within the standard career concerns framework. We prove that this rating is a linear function of past observations. The...

Clare Leaver, Owen Ozier, Pieter Serneels, and Andrew Zeitlin

vol. 111, n. 7, July 2021, pp. 2213–2246

This paper reports on a two-tiered experiment designed to separately identify the selection and effort margins of pay for performance (P4P). At the recruitment stage, teacher labor markets were randomly assigned to a "pay-for-percentile" or fixed-wage contract. Once recruits were placed, an...

Xavier D'Haultfoeuille, Christophe Gaillac, and Arnaud Maurel

vol. 12, n. 3, July 2021, pp. 817–842

In this paper, we build a new test of rational expectations based on the marginal distributions of realizations and subjective beliefs. This test is widely applicable, including in the common situation where realizations and beliefs are observed in two dierent datasets that cannot be matched. We...

Susan Perry, Alecia Carter, Marco Smolla, Erol Akçay, Sabine Noebel, Jacob Foster, and Susan Healy

vol. 376, n. 1828, July 2021

Innovation—the combination of invention and social learning—can empower species to invade new niches via cultural adaptation. Social learning has typically been regarded as the fundamental driver for the emergence of traditions and thus culture. Consequently, invention has been relatively...

Manvir Singh, Alberto Acerbi, Christine Caldwell, Etienne Danchin, Guillaume Isabel, Lucas Molleman, Thom Scott-Philips, Monica Tamariz, Pieter Van der Berg, Edwin Van Leeuwen, and Maxime Derex

vol. 376, n. 1828, July 2021

Cultural evolution requires the social transmission of information. For this reason, scholars have emphasized social learning when explaining how and why culture evolves. Yet cultural evolution results from many mechanisms operating in concert. Here, we argue that the emphasis on social learning...

Stefan Ambec, and Jessica Coria

vol. 199, n. 104439, July 2021

We propose informational spillovers as a new rationale for the use of multiple policy instruments to mitigate a single externality. We investigate the design of a pollution standard when the firms’ abatement costs are unknown and emissions are taxed. A firm might abate pollution beyond what is...