Building on Item Response Theory we introduce students’ optimal behavior in multiple-choice tests. Our simulations indicate that the optimal penalty is relatively high, because although correction for guessing discriminates ...

In a context where demand for the services of a durable good changes over time, and this change may be uncertain, the paper shows that social welfare may be higher when the monopolist seller can commit to any future price ...

Ideally we would like subjects of experiments to be perfect strangers so that the situation they face at the lab is not just part of a long run interaction. Unfortunately, it is not easy to reach those conditions and ...

A disadvantage of multiple-choice tests is that students have incentives to guess. To discourage guessing, it is common to use scoring rules that either penalize wrong answers or reward omissions. These scoring rules are ...

This paper analyzes the impact of agency problems on two entrepreneurs’ choice whether to carry out a stand-alone or a joint project. A joint project can be conducted by a single or both entrepreneurs’ research units, which ...

This paper is concerned with the study of durability as an aspect of competition and market structure that contributes to determining the incentives for mergers. We find that relative to the incentives in industries that ...

In this note we characterize optimal punishments with detection lags when the market consists of n oligopolistic firms. We extend a previous note by Colombo and Labrecciosa (2006) [Colombo, L., and Labrecciosa, P., 2006. ...

This paper analyzes the emerging literature on the determinants of giving within a social network. We propose two main explanatory variables for previous experimental results on the friendship effect. The first is social ...

This paper explores the role of social integration on altruistic behavior. To this aim, we develop a two-stage experimental protocol based on the classic Dictator Game. In the first stage, we ask a group of 77 undergraduate ...

This paper investigates the extent to which a biased transmission of educational endowments affects fertility. To this end, we devise a version of Becker’s family decision model that takes preference change into account. ...