Self-confidence and behavioral economics of work: three experimental trials.

Summary This manuscript includes three essays that share the common objective of assessing the impact of self-confidence on economic agents' decisions using the experimental method. This work focuses on three topics related to the behavioral economics of work: moonlighting, job search and teamwork. The first chapter analyzes optimism biases in the context of irregular work. This work provides a measure of optimism bias through a decision process. The results show that the way in which the control is announced alters the perception of risk: the designation of the number of agents randomly controlled tends to encourage the optimism of fraudsters. The second chapter examines how uncertainty about skill and self-esteem affect job seekers' search decisions. The results show that, on average, low-skill agents do not change their reservation wages, while high-skill subjects tend to lower their wage demands and thus stop their search more quickly. However, the decisions of low-skill agents are not homogeneous: low-skill agents have higher wage demands the higher their self-esteem. The third chapter aims to evaluate the extent to which workers' self-image conditions their choice of effort when working in a group. The results show that agents who over- (under-) evaluate their ability exert more (less) effort than subjects who have a correct perception of their skills. The results also reveal that individuals benefit from their partner's overconfidence, but not from their own bias, while underconfidence worsens the well-being of all team members.