VILLEVAL Marie Claire

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The purpose of this thesis was to question the sphere of influence of guilt aversion by investigating (i) the direction of guilt: can individuals have guilt aversion toward someone who is not affected monetarily by their decisions, or only toward someone whose income is affected? (ii) some necessary conditions for the emergence of guilt aversion: does the vulnerability of the person towards whom individuals may feel guilty have an impact on the emergence of guilt? (iii) the robustness of guilt aversion to selfish biases: are individuals strategic in their acquisition of information about the expectations of others in order to avoid triggering their guilt? On the one hand, our work revealed for the first time that people can be guilt averse even toward people who are not financially affected by their decisions. This finding, obtained in the context of an embezzlement game (Chapter 1), was extended to new contexts where guilt aversion was systematically observed toward gamblers regardless of their vulnerability (Chapter 2). On the other hand, although guilt aversion appears to generalize to a variety of situations, we have shown that its robustness can be challenged in situations where decision makers have the opportunity to avoid the tension between their monetary incentives and belief concerns (Chapter 3).

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We study a dynamic variant of the die-under-the-cup task where players can repeatedly misreport the outcomes of consecutive die rolls to earn more money, either under a noncompetitive piece rate scheme or in a two-player competitive tournament. In this dynamic setting we test (i) whether giving continuous feedback (vs. final ex post feedback) on the opponent’s reported outcome to both players encourages cheating behavior, and (ii) to what extent this influence depends on the incentive scheme in use (piece rate vs. tournament). We also vary whether the opponent is able to cheat or not. We find that people lie more when placed in a competitive rather than a non-competitive setting, but only if both players can cheat in the tournament. Continuous feedback on the counterpart’s reports increases cheating under the piece-rate scheme but not in a competitive setting. Our results provide new insights on the role that feedback plays on cheating behavior in dynamic settings under different payment schemes, and shed liht on the origins of the effect of competition on dishonesty.

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We explore the effects of competitive incentives and of their time horizon on the evolution of both asset prices and trading activity in experimental asset markets. We compare (i) a no-bonus treatment. (ii) a short-term bonus treatment in which bonuses are assigned to the best performers at the end of each trading period. (iii) a long-term bonus treatment in which bonuses are assigned to the best performers at the end of the 15 periods of the market. We find that the existence of bonus contracts does not increase the likelihood of bubbles but it affects their severity, depending on the time horizon of bonuses. Markets with long-term bonus contracts experience lower price deviations and a lower turnover of assets than markets with either no bonuses or long-term bonus contracts. Short-term bonus contracts increase price deviations but only when markets include a higher share of male traders. At the individual level, the introduction of bonus contracts increases the trading activity of males, probably due to their higher competitiveness.

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A donation may have ambiguous costs or ambiguous benefits. Behavior in a laboratory experiment suggests that individuals use this ambiguity strategically as a moral wiggle room to act less generously without feeling guilty. Such excuse-driven behavior is more pronounced when the costs of a donation -rather than its benefits- are ambiguous. However, the importance of excuse-driven behavior is comparable under ambiguity and under risk. Individuals exploit any type of uncertainty as an excuse not to give, regardless of the nature of this uncertainty.

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Standard economic models assume that individuals collect and process information in a way that gives them a relatively accurate perception of reality. However, this assumption is often challenged. Evidence shows that individuals often form positive biases about themselves, which can have adverse economic consequences. This thesis aims to explain the persistence of overconfidence in social interactions by showing the existence of strategic benefits of overconfidence that outweigh its social cost.Using a series of laboratory experiments, this thesis shows that (i) overconfidence occurs primarily when it provides an advantage in social interactions (Chapter 2) and (ii) identifies situations in which overconfidence is likely to harm society (Chapters 3 and 4). This thesis contributes to the literature by improving our understanding of the situational determinants of overconfidence in social interactions and lays the groundwork for improving policies to prevent or limit negative effects.

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In a laboratory experiment we test the interaction effects of status and group identity on interpersonal trust. Natural group identity is generated by school affiliation. Status (expert or agent) is awarded based on relative performance in a math quiz that is ex ante less favorable to the subjects from one group. We find that "promoted" trustors (individuals from the disadvantaged group that nevertheless achieve the status of expert) trust less both in-group and out-group trustees, compared to the other members of their group. Rather than playing against the effects of natural group identity, status promotion singles-out individuals. In contrast, trustworthiness is not affected by status and there is no evidence that interacting with promoted individuals impacts trust or trustworthiness.

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This thesis investigates whether individuals manipulate their memory to forget certain information that threatens their beliefs. It experimentally tests the existence and strength of motivated memory in three economically relevant contexts: social preferences, individual performance, and dishonest decisions. Chapter 1 examines whether individuals exhibit motivated memory in social interactions. Do individuals forget the consequences of their actions on others? If so, does this depend on the nature (e.g., selfish or altruistic) of their actions? Our results confirm the selectivity of memories. Individuals remember the consequences of their actions on others better when they were generous than when they were selfish. In contrast, the direction and magnitude of memory errors did not differ by the nature of the choices. Chapter 2 disentangles two mechanisms identified as possible explanations for the existence of selective memory regarding individual performance: self-reinforcement and mood congruence. We test the existence of motivated memory in a controlled environment where the two theories offer divergent predictions. Our results support the existence and relative dominance of the self-reinforcement effect over mood congruence, and thus underscore the importance of motivational rather than affective factors in the formation of motivated beliefs.Chapter 3 examines whether individuals forget their dishonest behaviors not only for hedonic reasons but also for strategic reasons, when forgetting serves to justify a future decision. We find that hedonic considerations alone are not sufficient to trigger memory manipulation. On the other hand, when forgetting is used as an excuse not to engage in morally responsible behavior, individuals manipulate their memory. These results show that memory errors in economic contexts may result from cognitive impairment but also from memory motivated by the desire not to have to confront information that could damage one's self-image and call into question one's future choices.

Donors usually need intermediaries to transfer their donations to recipients. A risk is that donations can be embezzled before they reach the recipients. Using psychological game theory, we design a novel three-player Embezzlement Mini-Game to study whether intermediaries suffer from guilt aversion and whether guilt aversion toward the recipient is stronger than toward the donor. Testing the predictions of the model in a laboratory experiment, we show that the proportion of guilt-averse intermediaries is the same irrespective of the direction of the guilt. However, structural estimates indicate that the effect of guilt on behaviour is higher when the guilt is directed toward the recipient.

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In a finitely repeated game with asymmetric information, we experimentally study how reputation and standard market mechanisms change the nature of fraudulent announcements by experts. While some lies can be detected ex post by investors, other lies remain deniable. Lying behavior suggests that individuals care more about the consequences of being caught, rather than the act of lying per se. Allowing for reputation reduces the frequency of lies that can be detected but has no impact on deniable lies: individuals simply hide their lies better and fraud persists. Competition without reputation increases risky lies and never protects investment.

In the presence of social dilemmas, cooperation is more difficult to achieve when populations are heterogeneous because of conflicting interests within groups. We examine cooperation in the context of a non-linear common pool resource game, in which individuals have unequal extraction capacities and have to decide on their extraction of resources from the common pool. We introduce monetary and nonmonetary policy instruments in this environment. One instrument is based on two variants of a mechanism that taxes extraction and redistributes the tax revenue. The other instrument varies the observability of individual decisions. We find that the two tax and redistribution mechanisms reduce extraction, increase efficiency and decrease inequality within groups. The scarcity pricing mechanism, which is a per-unit tax equal to the marginal extraction externality, is more effective at reducing extraction than an increasing block tax that only taxes units extracted above the social optimum. In contrast, observability impacts only the Baseline condition by encouraging free-riding instead of creating moral pressure to cooperate.

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This thesis focuses on how individuals make decisions in the presence of risk and uncertainty. It consists of four essays that theoretically and experimentally study decision making.The first two essays study situations where a decision maker must decide whether an event has occurred using uncertain information. Correctly identifying that this event has occurred is more rewarding than correctly identifying that it has not occurred. This decision problem induces a divergence between two qualities of a decision: optimality and accuracy. The two trials reproduce such situations in a perceptual task-based laboratory experiment and analyze the decisions using signal detection theory to study the optimality-accuracy trade-off. The first trial confirms the existence of such a trade-off with a dominant role of accuracy seeking. It explains the existence of this trade-off by non-monetary utility associated with being right. The second chapter shows that presenting perceptual information last contributes to the existence of the optimality-accuracy trade-off.The third essay studies how life-to-life preferences of others interact with the attitude toward ambiguity. It presents the results of an experiment in which subjects are asked to make donations to charities. Donations can have ambiguous costs or benefits. We find that ambiguity has the effect of making individuals more selfish. In other words, we show that individuals use ambiguity as an excuse not to give. This self-justifying behavior is stronger for ambiguous costs than for ambiguous benefits.The fourth test examines the external validity of risk preference measures in the laboratory using decisions in other risky experimental tasks and decisions made on outside the laboratory. We find that risk preference measures are able to explain the former, but do not explain the latter.

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This thesis contains three essays in behavioral ethics. Using tools from experimental economics and neurophysiology, our work unveils some of the social and contextual determinants that influence decisions related to honesty or fairness.The first chapter examines how competitive incentives influence the impact of social identity and the nature of the lie on (mis)honest behavior. Our results show that in competition, group identity plays no role, even when experimenters cannot directly observe cheaters' behavior. However, participants are less dishonest when their lies directly affect their opponent than when they only indirectly affect them, but only when the experimenter cannot directly observe their lies.The second chapter examines the effect of being continuously informed of another person's potentially dishonest performance on individuals' dishonesty in both competitive and non-competitive settings. Our results show that, only in competition, participants' dishonesty is not affected by the type of information they receive (continuous or final). This is mainly due to the fact that, when they are not continuously informed, male participants overestimate their opponent's dishonesty. Thus, when they are informed of their opponent's actual behavior, they adapt their behavior and cheat less than when they are not informed.Finally, the third chapter examines whether suffering a loss or gain in a task affects a subsequent sharing decision. Consistent with our theoretical predictions, we find that losing money, relative to a benchmark, reduces people's generosity, while experiencing a gain subsequently increases individuals' generosity. Contrary to what one might think, the level of emotional arousal experienced when people are informed of the amount received does not explain their sharing decision.

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Deterrence institutions are widely used in modern societies to discourage rule violations but whether they have an impact beyond their immediate scope of application is usually ignored. Using a natural field experiment, we show that they affect intrinsic honesty across contexts. We identified fraudsters and non-fraudsters in public transport who were or not exposed to ticket inspections by the transport company. We then measured the intrinsic honesty of the same persons in a new unrelated context where they could misappropriate money. Instead of having an educative effect across contexts, the exposure to deterrence practices increases unethical behavior of fraudsters but also of non-fraudsters.

We investigate whether peer effects at work differ by gender and whether gender differences in peer effects -if any- depend on work organization. We develop a social network model with gender heterogeneity that we test in a real-effort laboratory experiment. We compare sequential networks in which information flows from peers to the worker and simultaneous networks where it disseminates bi-directionally. We identify strong gender differences as females disregard their peers’ performance in simultaneous networks, while males are influenced by peers in both networks. Females may perceive the environment in simultaneous networks as being more competitive than in sequential networks.

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Is success in a task used strategically by individuals to motivate their beliefs prior to taking action in a subsequent, unrelated, task? Also, is the distortion of beliefs reinforced for individuals who have lower status in society? Conducting an artefactual field experiment in India, we show that success when competing in a task increases the performers' self-confidence and competitiveness in the subsequent task. We also find that such spillovers affect the self-confidence of low-status individuals more than that of high-status individuals. Receiving good news under Affirmative Action, however, boosts confidence across tasks regardless of the caste status.

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We present experiments exploring why high ability workers join teams with less able co-workers when there are no short-term financial benefits. We distinguish between two explanations: pro-social preferences and expected long-term financial gains from teaching future teammates. Participants perform a real-effort task and decide whether to work independently or join a two-person team. Treatments vary the payment scheme (piece rate or revenue sharing), whether teammates can communicate, and the role of teaching. High ability workers are more willing to join teams in the absence of revenue sharing and less willing to join teams when they cannot communicate. When communication is possible, the choice of high ability workers to join teams is driven by expected future financial gains from teaching rather than some variety of pro-social preferences. This result has important implications for the role of adverse selection in determining the productivity of teams.

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This thesis contributes to the consideration of limited attention in economic analysis. We defend the idea that attention allocation processes can be studied through a production process with as input the allocated attention (the amount of attentional resources invested in the decision), and as output the effective attention (the amount of information contained in the decision). In order to improve the understanding of these processes, we propose three experiments borrowing methods from psychology and cognitive sciences. In the first chapter, we manipulate the order of presentation between an incentive information and a visual stimulus, in a two-alternative forced choice paradigm. Allocated attention is controlled, and we measure effective attention using a signal detection model. We show that the last information presented has a greater weight in the decision and attribute this effect to a division of attention. The second chapter proposes an experiment in which participants allocate costly attention to reduce uncertainty in a discrimination task. Thus, we measure both allocated attention (through response time) and effective attention (through performance). This experiment allows us to study social attentional dilemmas (situations where attention is costly for the individual but beneficial for the group) and to highlight a discrepancy between social preferences - traditionally measured by monetary allocation choices - and the behaviors observed in our social attentional dilemma. The last chapter proves that it is possible to empirically implement and test the validity of a revealed preference model with random attention. We propose a new characterization and theorem of revealed preferences in the context of a more general version of the Brady and Rehbeck (2016, Econometrica) model. We develop statistical procedures - which we analyze using numerical simulations - to test the model's axioms, reveal preferences, and obtain a measure of effective attention. We test the validity of the model using a selective attention task in which participants choose a monetary payoff from a set of distractors. The behaviors observed in this experiment are consistent with the model and the experimentally induced preferences.

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Using a laboratory experiment with nested local and global public goods, we analyze the stability of global groups when individuals have the option to separate, according to the degree of decentralization of decision-making. We show that increasing the number of decisions made at the local level within a smaller group reduces the likelihood that individuals vote in favor of a configuration that includes no global good for interacting only within their local group. Voting for such a configuration is more likely when global group members are less cooperative and local group members are more cooperative. Reinforcing local group identity has no impact on votes.

Donors usually need intermediaries to transfer their donations to recipients. A risk is that donations can be embezzled before they reach the recipients. Using psychological game theory, we design a novel three-player Embezzlement Mini-Game to study whether intermediaries suffer from guilt aversion and whether guilt aversion toward the recipient is stronger than toward the donor. Testing the predictions of the model in a laboratory experiment, we show that the proportion of guilt-averse intermediaries is the same irrespective of the direction of the guilt. However, structural estimates indicate that the effect of guilt on behaviour is higher when the guilt is directed toward the recipient.

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Using a laboratory experiment with nested local and global public goods, we analyze the stability of global groups when individuals have the option to separate, according to the degree of decentralization of decision-making. We show that increasing the number of decisions made at the local level within a smaller group reduces the likelihood that individuals vote in favor of a configuration that includes no global good for interacting only within their local group. Voting for such a configuration is more likely when global group members are less cooperative and local group members are more cooperative. Reinforcing local group identity has no impact on votes.

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Studying the likelihood that individuals cheat requires a valid statistical measure of dishonesty. We develop an easy empirical method to measure and compare lying behavior within and across studies to correct for sampling errors. This method estimates the full distribution of lying when agents privately observe the outcome of a random process (e.g., die roll) and can misreport what they observed. It provides a precise estimate of the mean and confidence interval (offering lower and upper bounds on the proportion of people lying) over the full distribution, allowing for a vast range of statistical inferences not generally available with existing methods.

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Studying the likelihood that individuals cheat requires a valid statistical measure of dishonesty. We develop an easy empirical method to measure and compare lying behavior within and across studies to correct for sampling errors. This method estimates the full distribution of lying when agents privately observe the outcome of a random process (e.g., die roll) and can misreport what they observed. It provides a precise estimate of the mean and confidence interval (offering lower and upper bounds on the proportion of people lying) over the full distribution, allowing for a vast range of statistical inferences not generally available with existing methods.

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We conduct an artefactual field experiment using a diversified sample of passengers of public transportations to study attitudes towards dishonesty. We find that the diversity of behavior in terms of dis/honesty in laboratory tasks and in the field correlate. Moreover, individuals who have just been fined in the field behave more honestly in the lab than the other fare-dodgers, except when context is introduced. Overall, we show that simple tests of dishonesty in the lab can predict moral firmness in life, although fraudsters who care about social image cheat less when behavior can be verified ex post by the experimenter.

In the context of a race to hire in the labor market, we measure the influence of the union's bargaining power on the outcome of the competition between two duo-firms. A theoretical model identifies the influence of efficient bargaining on the maximum bid of each firm. The properties of this model are tested by the two-step Heckman procedure. Union power reduces a firm's probability of winning the auction, but only above a certain level.

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A donation may have ambiguous costs or ambiguous benefits. In a laboratory experiment, we show that individuals use this ambiguity strategically as a moral wiggle room to behave less generously without feeling guilty. Such excuse-driven behavior is more pronounced when the costs of a donation-rather than its benefits-are ambiguous. However, the importance of excuse-driven behavior is comparable under ambiguity and under risk. Individuals exploit any type of uncertainty as an excuse not to give, regardless of the nature of this uncertainty.

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We develop a model of organization change where the production of homogeneous good tates place under uncertain demand. In a two-stage duopoly game, firms choose first their organizational structure, and then determine market quantities and wages. Two results are highlighted. First, whether firms adopt organizational change or not depends on the volatility of demand and te availability of skilled labor. Second, organizational change generates a higher level of wage inequality both between and within education groups. This model provides thus a theoritical explanation for the rising wage inequality observed in major OECD countries, and its divergence among them.

The memory people have of their past behavior is one of the main sources of information about themselves. To study whether people retrieve their memory self-servingly in social encounters, we designed an experiment in which participants play binary dictator games and then have to recall the amounts allocated to the receivers. We find evidence of motivated memory through selective recalls: dictators remember more their altruistic than their selfish choices. A causal effect of the responsibility of decisions is identified, as the recall asymmetry disappears when options are selected randomly by the computer program. Incentivizing memory accuracy increases the percentage of dictators’ correct recalls only when they behaved altruistically. In contrast, there is no clear evidence of motivated memory through biased, i.e., overly optimistic recalls: dictators recall selectively but they do not bias strategically the direction and magnitude of these recalls.

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While considered as appealing for positive and normative reasons, anecdotal evidence suggests that upward social mobility may harm interpersonal interactions. We report on an experiment testing the effect of upward social mobility on interpersonal trust. Individuals are characterized both by a natural group identity and by a status awarded by means of relative performance in a task in which natural identities strongly predict performance. Upward mobility is characterized by the access to the high status of individuals belonging to the natural group associated with a lower expected performance. We find that socially mobile individuals trust less than those who are not socially mobile, especially when the trustee belongs to the same natural group. In contrast, upward mobility does not affect trustworthiness. We find no evidence that interacting with an upwardly mobile individual impacts trust or trustworthiness.

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We investigate whether peer effects at work differ by gender and whether the gender difference in peer effects-if any-depends on work organization, precisely the structure of social networks. We develop a social network model with gender heterogeneity that we test by means of a real-effort laboratory experiment. We compare sequential networks in which information on peers flows exclusively downward (from peers to the worker) and simultaneous networks where it disseminates bi-directionally along an undirected line (from peers to the worker and from the worker to peers). We identify strong gender differences in peer effects, as males' effort increases with peers' performance in both types of network, whereas females behave conditionally. While they are influenced by peers in sequential networks, females disregard their peers' performance when information flows in both directions. We reject that the difference between networks is driven by having one's performance observed by others or by the presence of peers in the same session in simultaneous networks. We interpret the gender difference in terms of perception of a higher competitiveness of the environment in simultaneous than in sequential networks because of the bi-directional flow of information.

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We investigate whether peer effects at work differ by gender and whether the gender difference in peer effects –if any- depends on work organization, precisely the structure of social networks. We develop a social network model with gender heterogeneity that we test by means of a realeffort laboratory experiment. We compare sequential networks in which information on peers flows exclusively downward (from peers to the worker) and simultaneous networks where it disseminates bi-directionally along an undirected line (from peers to the worker and from the worker to peers). We identify strong gender differences in peer effects, as males’ effort increases with peers’ performance in both types of network, whereas females behave conditionally. While they are influenced by peers in sequential networks, females disregard their peers’ performance when information flows in both directions. We reject that the difference between networks is driven by having one’s performance observed by others or by the presence of peers in the same session in simultaneous networks. We interpret the gender difference in terms of perception of a higher competitiveness of the environment in simultaneous than in sequential networks because of the bi-directional flow of information.

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We conduct an artefactual field experiment to examine various spillover effects of Affirmative Action policies in the context of castes in India. We test a) if individuals who enter tournaments in the presence of Affirmative Action policies remain competitive after the policy has been removed, and b) whether having been exposed to the policy generates unethical behavior and spite against subjects from the category who has benefited from the policy. We find that these policies substantially increase the confidence and the competitiveness of the backward caste members. However, we find no spillover effect on confidence and competitiveness once Affirmative Action is withdrawn: any gain in competitiveness due to the policy is then entirely wiped out. Furthermore, the strong existing bias of the dominant category against the backward category is not significantly aggravated by Affirmative Action, except when individuals learn that they have lost the previous competition.

We compare inequality aversion in individuals and teams by means of both within- and between-subject experimental designs, and we investigate how teams aggregate individual preferences. We find that team decisions reveal less inequality aversion than individual initial proposals in team decision-making. However, teams are no more selfish than individuals who decide in isolation. Individuals express strategically more inequality aversion in their initial proposals in team decision-making because they anticipate the selfishness of other members. Members with median social preferences drive team decisions. Finally, we show that social image has little influence because guilt and envy are almost similar in anonymous and non-anonymous interactions.

A large literature in psychology studies the effects of the immediate decision environment on behavior, and conceptualizes both cognitive capacity and self-control as scarce resources that can be depleted by recent use, and replenished by factors like rest and nutrition. We assess the relevance of resource-depletion models for intertemporal financial decisions by estimating the effects of three interventions –prior impulse-controlling activity, consumption of a sugared drink, and consumption of a placebo (sugar-free) drink-- on intertemporal monetary choices in a cash-advance framework. These manipulations have large impacts on the demand for advances, but contrary to resource-based models prior impulse-controlling activity and placebo drink consumption increase patience. To understand these effects, we estimate treatment effects on the three parameters of a decision utility model for every subject in our sample. All treatments reduce utility curvature and present-bias, and these movements are highly correlated. Together, we argue that these patterns suggest that the treatments are acting not on subjects’ fundamental utility parameters but on subjects’ tendencies to frame financial decisions narrowly (within the frame of the lab experiment) versus broadly (in the context of their other financial options). Thus, while decision environments have large effects on intertemporal financial decisions, both the direction and the mechanisms underlying these effects appear to be quite different from those suggested by resource-depletion models.

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We investigate whether peer effects at work differ by gender and whether the gender difference in peer effects –if any- depends on work organization, precisely the structure of social networks. We develop a social network model with gender heterogeneity that we test by means of a realeffort laboratory experiment. We compare sequential networks in which information on peers flows exclusively downward (from peers to the worker) and simultaneous networks where it disseminates bi-directionally along an undirected line (from peers to the worker and from the worker to peers). We identify strong gender differences in peer effects, as males’ effort increases with peers’ performance in both types of network, whereas females behave conditionally. While they are influenced by peers in sequential networks, females disregard their peers’ performance when information flows in both directions. We reject that the difference between networks is driven by having one’s performance observed by others or by the presence of peers in the same session in simultaneous networks. We interpret the gender difference in terms of perception of a higher competitiveness of the environment in simultaneous than in sequential networks because of the bi-directional flow of information.

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In France, cancer treatment is mainly dominated by hospital technical platforms, but these are saturated and considered too expensive. For these reasons, public decision-makers wish to develop alternative structures: hospitalization at home or proximity structures (SP) such as multidisciplinary health centres. Objective:-To study the adequacy between public health policies and the preferences of patients and the general population.-To test the acceptability and validity of the contingent valuation (CV) method (willingness-to-pay survey: DTP) as a means of obtaining preferences in the general population in order to guide public decision making.Method:-We developed a computerized information and decision support tool that contained 1. Information on the three care options: hospital, home, SP 2. A preference measurement survey 3. Results: The patient survey was conducted in 3 institutions (n=386), the general population survey was conducted on a representative sample of the Rhône-Alpes Region (n=1001). The hospital was the preferred option for both populations, with 71% of patients versus 42.6% of the general population, followed by the home with 24% of patients and 38.8% of the general population. The acceptability and validity of the CE in the general population seems to be confirmed by the low number of protesters and outliers as well as the correlation between PAD, income and preferences.

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Achieving an ambitious goal frequently requires succeeding in a sequence of intermediate tasks, some being critical for the final outcome, and others not. However, individuals are not always able to provide a level of effort sufficient to guarantee success in all such intermediate tasks. The ability to manage effort throughout the sequence of tasks is therefore critical when resources are limited. In this paper we propose a criterion that defines the importance of a task and identifies how an individual should optimally allocate a limited stock of exhaustible efforts over tasks. We test this importance criterion in a laboratory experiment that reproduces the main features of a tennis match. We show that our importance criterion is able to predict the individuals’ performance and it outperforms the Morris importance criterion that defines the importance of a point in terms of its impact on the probability of achieving the final outcome. We also find no evidence of choking under pressure and stress, as proxied by electrophysiological measures.

We investigate whether peer effects at work differ by gender and whether gender differences in peer effects -if any- depend on work organization. We develop a social network model with gender heterogeneity that we test in a real-effort laboratory experiment. We compare sequential networks in which information flows from peers to the worker and simultaneous networks where it disseminates bi-directionally. We identify strong gender differences as females disregard their peers’ performance in simultaneous networks, while males are influenced by peers in both networks. Females may perceive the environment in simultaneous networks as being more competitive than in sequential networks.

We present the implementation of an economic experiment conducted simultaneously in 11 French cities, with over 2700 participants, during four uninterrupted hours, during a popular-science event held in September 2015. Our goal is both to provide a roadmap for a possible replication and to discuss how the discipline can invest in new fields (science popularization, popular education, public communication).

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Objectives: (1) To explore and analyze individual perceptions of all-cause cancer risk and environmental factors. (2) To investigate the links between these perceptions and the adoption of health behaviors. (3) To identify and analyze the determinants of these perceptions. Methods: Reviews of the empirical and theoretical literature, qualitative study with people with and without a history of cancer, quantitative study with a representative sample of the French population. Results: (1) Cancer risks related to environmental factors are a matter of concern. A significant proportion of participants perceived themselves to be at risk of developing cancers related to air pollution, pesticides and stress. (2) Health behavior adoption is sometimes associated with risk perceptions but is more often associated with adherence to prevention beliefs and time and risk preferences. Taking endogeneity into account has a strong impact on the significance of associations between perceptions and behaviors. (3) Adherence to cancer-related beliefs and salience of environment-related cancer risks determine perceptions more strongly than affect and availability heuristics, knowledge, perceived control and perceived willingness to accept risk exposures, personal health history, and sociodemographic characteristics. Discussion: Our results, consistent with the literature, provide a better understanding of individual risk perceptions and can be used to support the development of targeted public health policies.

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Using a real-effort experiment, we study whether group identity affects unethical behavior in a contest game. We vary whether minimal group identity is induced or not, whether individuals have to report their own outcome or the outcome of their competitor, and whether pairs of competitors share the same group identity or not. We show that individuals misreport in the same proportion and to the same extent by inflating their outcome or by decreasing their opponent’s outcome, except when any possible scrutiny by the experimenter is removed. Regardless of the possibility of scrutiny by the experimenter, misreporting is affected neither by the competitor’s group identity nor by the individual’s beliefs about others’ misreporting behavior. This suggests that in competitive settings, unethical behavior is mainly driven by an unconditional desire to win.

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In the presence of social dilemmas, cooperation is more difficult to achieve when populations are heterogeneous because of conflicting interests within groups. We examine cooperation in the context of a non-linear common pool resource game, in which individuals have unequal extraction capacities and have to decide on their extraction of resources from the common pool. We introduce monetary and nonmonetary policy instruments in this environment. One instrument is based on two variants of a mechanism that taxes extraction and redistributes the tax revenue. The other instrument varies the observability of individual decisions. We find that the two tax and redistribution mechanisms reduce extraction, increase efficiency and decrease inequality within groups. The scarcity pricing mechanism, which is a per-unit tax equal to the marginal extraction externality, is more effective at reducing extraction than an increasing block tax that only taxes units extracted above the social optimum. In contrast, observability impacts only the Baseline condition by encouraging free-riding instead of creating moral pressure to cooperate.

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Using a social dilemma game, we study the cooperative behavior of individuals who reintegrate their group after being excluded by their peers. We manipulate the length of exclusion and whether this length is imposed exogenously or results from a vote. We show that people are willing to exclude the least cooperators and they punish more, and more severely, chronic defections. In return, a longer exclusion has a higher disciplining effect on cooperation after reintegration, but only when the length of exclusion is not chosen by group members. Its relative disciplining effect is smaller when the length of exclusion results from a vote. In this environment, a quicker reintegration also limits retaliation. The difference in the impact of long vs. short exclusion on retaliation is larger when the length of exclusion is chosen by group members than when it is exogenous. Post-reintegration cooperation and forgiveness depend not only on the length of exclusion but also on the perceived intentions of others when they punish.

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We conduct an artefactual field experiment to examine various spillover effects of Affirmative Action policies in the context of castes in India. We test a) if individuals who enter tournaments in the presence of Affirmative Action policies remain competitive after the policy has been removed, and b) whether having been exposed to the policy generates unethical behavior and spite against subjects from the category who has benefited from the policy. We find that these policies substantially increase the confidence and the competitiveness of the backward caste members. However, we find no spillover effect on confidence and competitiveness once Affirmative Action is withdrawn: any gain in competitiveness due to the policy is then entirely wiped out. Furthermore, the strong existing bias of the dominant category against the backward category is not significantly aggravated by Affirmative Action, except when individuals learn that they have lost the previous competition.

Embezzlement is a major concern. By means of a sequential dictator game, we investigate theoretically and experimentally whether making information more transparent and reducing the number of intermediaries in transfer chains can reduce embezzlement. Consistent with reference-dependent preferences in terms of moral ideal, we show that the impact of transparency is conditional on the length of the transfer chain and on the position of the intermediary in the chain. Its direct effect on image encourages honesty. Its indirect effect via expectations plays in the opposite direction, motivating intermediaries to embezzle more when expecting that the following intermediary will embezzle less.

Achieving an ambitious goal frequently requires succeeding in a sequence of intermediary tasks, some being critical for the final outcome, and others not. Individuals are not always able to provide a level of effort sufficient to guarantee success in all the intermediary tasks. The ability to manage effort throughout the sequence of tasks is therefore critical. In this paper we propose a criterion that defines the importance of a task and that identifies how an individual should optimally allocate a limited stock of exhaustible efforts over tasks. We test this importance criterion in a laboratory experiment that reproduces the main features of a tennis match. We show that our importance criterion is able to predict the individuals' performance and it outperforms the Morris importance criterion that defines the importance of a point in terms of its impact on the probability to achieve the final outcome. We also find no evidence of choking under pressure and stress, as proxied by electrophysiological measures.

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The concentration of high frequency controls in a limited period of time (" crackdowns ") constitutes an important feature of many law-enforcement policies around the world. In this paper, we offer a comprehensive investigation on the relative efficiency and effectiveness of various crackdown policies using a lab-in-the-field experiment with real passengers of a public transport service. We introduce a novel game, the daily public transportation game, where subjects have to decide, over many periods, whether to buy or not a ticket knowing that there might be a control. Our results show that (a) concentrated crackdowns are less effective and efficient than random controls. (b) prolonged crackdowns reduce fare-dodging during the period of intense monitoring but induces a burst of fraud as soon as they are withdrawn. (c) pre-announced controls induces more fraud in the periods without control. Overall, we also observe that real fare-dodgers fraud more in the experiment than non-fare-dodgers.

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Are people willing to sacrifice resources to save one’s and others’ face? In a laboratory experiment, we study whether individuals forego resources to avoid the public exposure of the least performer in their group. We show that a majority of individuals are willing to pay to preserve not only their self- but also other group members’ image, even when group identity is minimal. When group identity is made more salient, individuals help regardless of whether the least performer is an in-group or an out-group. In contrast, people are less likely to sacrifice for individual strangers, showing a major role for group identity and reputation concerns within groups relative to an interpretation in terms of moral norms.

We study the impact of communication on behavior in a two-stage coordination game with asymmetric payoffs. We test experimentally whether individuals can avoid a head-to-head confrontation by means of coordinated strategies. In particular we analyze whether and how quickly a conflict-avoidance take-turn strategy can emerge. First, our results show that players learn to solve the conflict by choosing opposite options at both stages of the game. Second, many adopt a take-turn strategy to sustain coordination over time and alleviate the inequality induced by the asymmetry of payoffs. Third, communication increases the likelihood of conflict resolution even when a single pair member has the right to communicate.

We study mutual-aid games in which individuals choose to contribute to an informal mutual insurance pool. Individual coverage is determined by the aggregate level of contributions and a sharing rule. We analyze theoretically and experimentally the (ex ante) efficiency of equal and contribution-based coverage. The equal coverage mechanism leads to a unique no-insurance equilibrium while contribution-based coverage develops multiple equilibria and improves efficiency. Experimentally, the latter treatment reduces the amount of transfers from high contributors to low contributors and generates a \dual interior equilibrium". That dual equilibrium is consistent with the co-existence of different prior norms which correspond to notable equilibria derived in the theory. This results in asymmetric outcomes with a majority of high contributors less than fully reimbursing the global losses and a significant minority of low contributors less than fully defecting. Such behavioral heterogeneity may be attributed to risk attitudes (risk tolerance vs risk aversion) which is natural in a risky context.

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The concentration of high frequency controls in a limited period of time (“crackdowns”) constitutes an important feature of many law-enforcement policies around the world. In this paper, we offer a comprehensive investigation on the relative efficiency and effectiveness of various crackdown policies using a lab-in-the-field experiment with real passengers of a public transport service. We introduce a novel game, the daily public transportation game, where subjects have to decide, over many periods, whether to buy or not a ticket knowing that there might be a control. Our results show that (a) concentrated crackdowns are less effective and efficient than random controls. (b) prolonged crackdowns reduce fare-dodging during the period of intense monitoring but induces a burst of fraud as soon as they are withdrawn. (c) pre-announced controls induces more fraud in the periods without control. Overall, we also observe that real fare-dodgers fraud more in the experiment than non-faredodgers.

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Can a company attract a different type of employee by changing its compensation scheme? Is it sufficient to pay more to increase employees’ motivation? Should a firm provide evaluation feedback to employees based on their absolute or their relative performance? Laboratory experiments can help address these questions by identifying the causal impact of variations in personnel policy on employees’ productivity and mobility. Although they are collected in an artificial environment, the qualitative external validity of findings from the lab is now well recognized.

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The back cover states: "Prejudices, beliefs, loss aversion, overconfidence, sense of fairness, risk appetite, competitiveness, etc. Whether we are employers, employees or job seekers, a multitude of psychological and cognitive factors guide our choices and behaviors in the job market. Taking into account the emotional and psychological forces that, alongside economic incentives and institutions, affect the functioning of this market could make employment policies more effective. This is the interest of the approach proposed by behavioral economics: to improve our understanding of job-seeking behavior and discrimination in hiring, to measure the selection and incentive effects of the level of remuneration on motivation, and to shed light on the role of trust in the construction of relational contracts.

Using a field experiment in China, we study whether migration status is correlated with attitudes toward risk, ambiguity, and competitiveness. Our subjects include migrants and non-migrants. We find that, migrants exhibit no differences from non-migrants in risk and ambiguity preferences elicited using pairs of lotteries . however, migrants are significantly more likely to enter competition in the presence of strategic uncertainty when they expect competitive entries from others. Our results suggest that migration may be driven more by a stronger belief in one's ability to succeed in an uncertain and competitive environment than by risk attitudes under state uncertainty.

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This paper studies the influence of peers on the extensive margin of effort at work by means of a real-effort experiment in which subjects have to decide on the intensity of effort and when to stop working. Participants perform a task alone or in the presence of a peer. The feedback on the co-worker's output is manipulated and we vary whether the two workers can communicate. We find that when communication is allowed, the average productivity per unit of time and the quitting time are not increased but the presence of a peer causes workers to stay longer and to quit at more similar times. Peer effects on the extensive margin of effort derive more from a sociability effect, i.e. a reduction of the social distance between co-workers that could make the other's presence more valuable, than from performance or quitting time comparisons.

Achieving an ambitious goal frequently requires succeeding in a sequence of intermediary tasks, some being critical for the final outcome, and others not. Individuals are not always able to provide a level of effort sufficient to guarantee success in all the intermediary tasks. The ability to manage effort throughout the sequence of tasks is therefore critical. In this paper we propose a criterion that defines the importance of a task and that identifies how an individual should optimally allocate a limited stock of exhaustible efforts over tasks. We test this importance criterion in a laboratory experiment that reproduces the main features of a tennis match. We show that our importance criterion is able to predict the individuals' performance and it outperforms the Morris importance criterion that defines the importance of a point in terms of its impact on the probability to achieve the final outcome. We also find no evidence of choking under pressure and stress, as proxied by electrophysiological measures.

We conduct an artefactual field experiment using a diversified sample of passengers of public transportations to study attitudes towards dishonesty. We find that the diversity of behavior in terms of dis/honesty in laboratory tasks and in the field correlate. Moreover, individuals who have just been fined in the field behave more honestly in the lab than the other fare-dodgers, except when context is introduced. Overall, we show that simple tests of dishonesty in the lab can predict moral firmness in life, although frauders who care about social image cheat less when behavior can be verified ex post by the experimenter.

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We theoretically show that loss-averse agents are more likely to lie to avoid receiving a low payoff after a random draw, the lower the ex-ante probability of this bad outcome. The ex-ante expected payoff increases as the bad outcome becomes less likely, and hence the greater is the loss avoided by lying. We demonstrate robust support for this theory by reanalyzing the results from the extant literature and with two new experiments that vary the outcome probabilities and are run doubleanonymous to remove reputation effects. To measure lying, we develop an empirical method that estimates the full distribution of dishonesty.

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This thesis focuses on the study of auditing policies for field and laboratory experiments. In particular, we focus on a particular auditing rule, called "crackdown", which is the concentration of systematic or high-frequency audits in a limited amount of time, and/or in a bounded geographic area or subset of the population. Although it has obvious implications and many applications, economists have shown little interest in this type of measure. In this thesis we study the effectiveness of different types of crackdowns. The first test asks whether there is an alternative way to improve the efficiency of crackdowns in a public good game in which contributing less than the average of other group members is punished and the probability of a check is unknown. We find that, under ambiguity, an intermittent control scheme can maintain the same level of cooperation compared to a systematic control scheme while being less costly. The second essay provides an in-depth study of the relative effectiveness of various crackdown policies using a laboratory field experiment with real passengers on a public transportation service. We introduce a novel game, the public transportation game, where participants have to decide, over several time periods, whether to purchase a ticket knowing that there may be a check. The main result is that sustained crackdowns are less effective than random checks. We also observe that actual fraudsters defraud more than non-fraudsters. The third essay develops a model studying the effectiveness of endogenous crackdowns, i.e., the sudden and dramatic increase in audit probability triggered by a low level of detected compliance. We test this model experimentally. Our results show that: (a) compliance with the rules reacts quickly to the appearance of crackdowns . (b) participants report more than half of their income, even during periods without crackdowns . (c) crackdown announcements increase compliance both ex ante and ex post. (d) participants are able to coordinate quickly to end crackdowns.

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We theoretically show that loss-averse agents are more likely to lie to avoid receiving a low payoff after a random draw, the lower the ex-ante probability of this bad outcome. The ex-ante expected payoff increases as the bad outcome becomes less likely, and hence the greater is the loss avoided by lying. We demonstrate robust support for this theory by reanalyzing the results from the extant literature and with two new experiments that vary the outcome probabilities and are run doubleanonymous to remove reputation effects. To measure lying, we develop an empirical method that estimates the full distribution of dishonesty.

Virtually every commercial transaction has within itself an element of trust, certainly any transaction conducted over a period of time. It can be plausibly argued that much of the economic backwardness in the world can be explained by the lack of mutual confidence. (Arrow 1972).

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We investigate the impact of various audit schemes on the provision of public goods, when contributing less than the average of the other group members is centrally sanctioned and the probability of an audit is unknown. We study how individuals update their beliefs about the probability of being audited, both before and after audits are permanently withdrawn. We find that when individuals have initially experienced systematic audits, they decrease both their beliefs and their contributions almost immediately after audits are withdrawn. In contrast, when audits were initially less frequent and more irregular, they maintain high beliefs and continue cooperating long after audits have been withdrawn. This identifies the compliance effect of irregularity and uncertainty due to learning difficulties. By increasing both the frequency of audits and the severity of sanctions, we also identify an educative effect of frequent and high sanctions on further cooperation.

While previous research has shown that social preferences develop in childhood, we study whether this development is accompanied by reduced use of deception when lies would harm others, and increased use of deception to benefit others. In a sample of children aged between 7 and 14, we find strong aversion to lying at all ages. Lying is driven mainly by selfish motives and envy. Children with stronger social preferences are less prone to deception, even when lying would benefit others at no monetary cost. Older children lie less than younger children and require more selfjustification to lie.

We investigate corruption as a social dilemma by means of a bribery game in which a risk of collective failure is introduced when the number of public officials accepting a bribe from firms reaches a certain threshold. We show that, despite the social risk, the pursuit of individual interest prevails and leads to the elimination of honest officials over time. Reducing the size of the groups while increasing the probability of collective failure diminishes the public officials' corruptibility but is not sufficient to eliminate the tragedy of corruption altogether.

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Are people willing to sacrifice resources to save one’s and others’ face? In a laboratory experiment, we study whether individuals forego resources to avoid the public exposure of the least performer in their group. We show that a majority of individuals are willing to pay to preserve not only their self- but also other group members’ image, even when group identity is minimal. When group identity is made more salient, individuals help regardless of whether the least performer is an in-group or an out-group. In contrast, people are less likely to sacrifice for individual strangers, showing a major role for group identity and reputation concerns within groups relative to an interpretation in terms of moral norms.

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Mechanisms to overcome social dilemmas provide incentives to maximize efficiency. However, often – such as when agents are heterogeneous – there is a trade-off between efficiency and equality – a normative conflict – which is overlooked. Agents' concerns for equality in such instances can limit the ability of mechanisms to promote efficiency. We provide evidence for this from a public good experiment using a simple mechanism allowing individuals to communicate periodically with other group members and reward them for their actions. We show that, in homogeneous populations – where there is no conflict between efficiency and equality – the mechanism permits groups to obtain maximum efficiency. This is not the case in heterogeneous populations despite the fact that individuals could use rewards to resolve the normative conflict. Although almost all heterogeneous groups agree to follow specific contribution rules with positive contributions, most of them either prioritize equality over efficiency or strike a compromise between the two. These findings suggest normative conflict can be difficult to overcome, imposing limits on the ability of heterogeneous populations to reach efficient outcomes through self-governance.

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Are people willing to sacrifice resources to save one’s and others’ face? In a laboratory experiment, we study whether individuals forego resources to avoid the public exposure of the least performer in their group. We show that a majority of individuals are willing to pay to preserve not only their self- but also other group members’ image, even when group identity is minimal. When group identity is made more salient, individuals help regardless of whether the least performer is an in-group or an out-group. In contrast, people are less likely to sacrifice for individual strangers, showing a major role for group identity and reputation concerns within groups relative to an interpretation in terms of moral norms.

This review surveys recent research developed in behavioral economics on the determinants of unethical behavior. Most recent progress has been made in three directions: the understanding of the importance of moral norms in individual decision-making, the conflicting role of opportunities provided by asymmetries of information and social preferences, and the crucial effect of rules, occupational norms and incentive schemes in the diffusion of dishonesty. The connection between economics and psychology is the most vivid on the first dimension.

We study the impact of communication on behavior in a two-stage coordination game with asymmetric payoffs. We test experimentally whether individuals can avoid a head-to-head confrontation by means of coordinated strategies. In particular we analyze whether and how quickly a conflict-avoidance take-turn strategy can emerge. First, our results show that players learn to solve the conflict by choosing opposite options at both stages of the game. Second, many adopt a take-turn strategy to sustain coordination over time and alleviate the inequality induced by the asymmetry of payoffs. Third, communication increases the likelihood of conflict resolution even when a single pair member has the right to communicate.

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We investigate how different forms of scrutiny affect dishonesty, using Gneezy’s (2005) deception game. We add a third player whose interests are aligned with those of the sender. We find that lying behavior is not sensitive to revealing the sender’s identity to the observer. The option for observers to communicate with the sender, and the option to reveal the sender’s lies to the receiver also do not affect lying behavior. Even more striking, senders whose identity is revealed to their observer do not lie less when their interests are misaligned with those of the observer.

While previous research has shown that social preferences develop in childhood, we study whether this development is accompanied by reduced use of deception when lies would harm others, and increased use of deception to benefit others. In a sample of children aged between 7 and 14, we find strong aversion to lying at all ages. Lying is driven mainly by selfish motives and envy. Children with stronger social preferences are less prone to deception, even when lying would benefit others at no monetary cost. Older children lie less than younger children and use self-justification to lie.

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We study mutual-aid games in which individuals choose to contribute to an informal mutual insurance pool. Individual coverage is determined by the aggregate level of contributions and a sharing rule. We analyze theoretically and experimentally the (ex ante) efficiency of equal and contribution-based coverage. The equal coverage mechanism leads to a unique no-insurance equilibrium while contribution-based coverage develops multiple equilibria and improves efficiency. Experimentally, the latter treatment reduces the amount of transfers from high contributors to low contributors and generates a "dual interior equilibrium". That dual equilibrium is consistent with the coexistence of different prior norms which correspond to notable equilibria derived in the theory. This results in asymmetric outcomes with a majority of high contributors less than fully reimbursing the global losses and a signi cant minority of low contributors less than fully defecting. Such behavioral heterogeneity may be attributed to risk attitudes (risk tolerance vs risk aversion) which is natural in a risky context.

We study mutual-aid games in which individuals choose to contribute to an informal mutual insurance pool. Individual coverage is determined by the aggregate level of contributions and a sharing rule. We analyze theoretically and experimentally the (ex ante) efficiency of equal and contribution-based coverage. The equal coverage mechanism leads to a unique no-insurance equilibrium while contribution-based coverage develops multiple equilibria and improves efficiency. Experimentally, the latter treatment reduces the amount of transfers from high contributors to low contributors and generates a "dual interior equilibrium". That dual equilibrium is consistent with the co-existence of different prior norms which correspond to notable equilibria derived in the theory. This results in asymmetric outcomes with a majority of high contributors less than fully reimbursing the global losses and a significant minority of low contributors less than fully defecting. Such behavioral heterogeneity may be attributed to risk attitudes (risk tolerance vs risk aversion) which is natural in a risky context.

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Do individuals trained in law enforcement punish or reward differently from typical student-subjects? We analyze norm enforcement behavior of newly appointed police commissioners in both a game with positive externalities (based on a Voluntary Contribution Mechanism) and a similar game with negative externalities. Depending on the treatment, a reward or sanction institution is either exogenously or endogenously implemented. Police commissioners cooperate significantly more in both games and bear a higher burden of the sanction costs compared to non-police subjects. When the norm enforcement institution is endogenous, subjects favor rewards over sanctions, but police subjects are more likely to vote for sanctions. Police subjects also reward and sanction more than the others when the institution results from a majority vote. Our experiment suggests that lab evidence on social dilemma games with positive or negative externalities and enforcement institutions is rather robust.

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This paper studies the influence of peers on the extensive margin of effort at work by means of a real-effort experiment in which subjects have to decide on the intensity of effort and when to stop working. Participants perform a task alone or in the presence of a peer. The feedback on the co-worker’s output is manipulated and we vary whether the two workers can communicate. We find that when communication is allowed, the average productivity per unit of time and the quitting time are not increased but the presence of a peer causes workers to stay longer and to quit at more similar times. Peer effects on the extensive margin of effort derive more from a sociability effect, i.e. a reduction of the social distance between co-workers that could make the other’s presence more valuable, than from performance or quitting time comparisons.

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This dissertation consists of an essay on the relationship between individuals' risk aversion and their migration decision and two essays on the importance of face saving and image reciprocity.The first essay uses a field experiment in China to investigate whether migration status is correlated with preferences for risk, ambiguity, and competitiveness. It shows that migrants and non-migrants do not differ in their preferences regarding risk and ambiguity in standard lotteries. In contrast, migrants have a more competitive attitude toward strategic uncertainty in a market entry game.The second test examines whether individuals are willing to sacrifice resources to save face by paying to avoid public exposure of their least productive group member using a real-effort laboratory experiment. The majority of individuals are willing to pay to preserve both their image and that of others. This result is robust to a manipulation of group identity. The ever-present sense of shame following public exposure crowds out intrinsic motivation.The third trial investigates the reward of benevolence and punishment of selfishness in terms of image. It shows that individuals reward benevolence and express reciprocity toward those who have preserved their image or that of another. In contrast, the selfishness of those who do not make an effort to save the face of others is not sanctioned.

From open source software to Wikipedia, peer production mobilizes hundreds of thousands of contributors around the world. It is an important source of value creation in the highly competitive information and technology sectors, and a major source of innovation. Even beyond its economic importance, the emergence of peer production represents an opportunity to shed new light on a number of long-standing and particularly difficult questions in the literature. Given the often unconventional nature of work incentives in peer production environments, they are particularly well suited to study the impact of non-standard economic preferences on the production of public goods, to analyze their role as work incentives, and to assess their consequences in terms of organizational economics.This dissertation work relies on an original online experimentation tool (developed and evaluated in Chapter 1) to combine large-scale online experiments and computational methods (i.This work relies on a novel online experimentation tool (developed and evaluated in Chapter 1) to combine large-scale online experiments and computational methods (i. e. systematic data mining of subjects' field behavior) in order to (i) conduct the first-ever comprehensive field test of the theory of private production of public goods, (ii) study the importance of social preferences as work motivations in real productive organizations, and (iii) conduct the first field tests documenting endogenous matching behaviors of economic agents in productive teams based on their cooperative type.

We investigate the impact of various audit schemes on the future provision of public goods, when contributing less than the average of the group is sanctioned exogenously and the probability of an audit is unknown. We study how individuals update their beliefs about the probability of being audited, both before and after audits are definitely withdrawn. We find that when individuals have initially experienced systematic audits, they decrease both their beliefs and their contributions almost immediately after audits are withdrawn. In contrast, when audits were initially less frequent and more irregular, they maintain high beliefs about the probability of being audited and continue cooperating long after audits have been withdrawn. Inconsistency in experiencing audits across time clearly increases the difficulty of learning the true audit probabilities. Thus, conducting less frequent and irregular audits with higher fines can increase efficiency dramatically.

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We conduct a real-effort experiment where participants choose between individual compensation and team-based pay. In contrast to tournaments, which are often avoided by women, we find that women choose team-based pay at least as frequently as men in all our treatments and conditions, and significantly more often than men in a well-defined subset of those cases. Key factors explaining gender patterns in attraction to co-operative incentives across experimental conditions include women's more optimistic assessments of their prospective teammate's ability and men's greater responsiveness to efficiency gains associated with team production. Women also respond differently to alternative rules for team formation in a manner that is consistent with stronger inequity aversion.

Shaming can be either of two types, shaming that becomes stigmatization of the offender and favors his exclusion from the community, or shaming that is followed by forgiveness and reintegration of the deviant. Here we test experimentally these aspects of shaming theory with a repeated tax-payment game, in which the shaming “ritual” consisted of displaying the evader’s picture in addition to charging monetary sanctions. Results show that when cheating is made public and the contravener is not successively reintegrated, the total amount of cheating is significantly increased compared to when cheating is made public but publicity is immediately followed by reintegration. The former condition is associated with more intense negative emotions related to cheating. This suggests that the employment of a social shaming mechanism may be an effective, albeit very sensitive, tool in the hands of policy makers.

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Recent developments in economic theory model intertemporal choice decisions as problems of restraining one's natural impulse to consume today. We use interventions that have been shown in the psychology literature to affect impulse control to examine whether this is indeed the case for laboratory elicitations of time preference. In other words, is savings behavior affected by manipulations of willpower? Our results are mixed, with one widely used willpower-reducing intervention increasing subjects' savings, and with evidence of a substantial placebo effects with respect to another intervention based on sugared beverage consumption. Since all our treatment effects -which are substantial in magnitude- are driven by increases in the intertemporal substitution elasticity (i.e. greater sensitivity to high prices), we suspect that the primary mechanism behind them is an increase in subjects' attention to the decision, rather than their ability to resist the temptation to get money sooner.

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We investigate experimentally ingratiatory behavior expressed by opinion conformity. Both individuals' performance at a task and their opinions on various topics can be observed before unequal payoffs are assigned by a second mover. In some treatments, first movers can change their opinion after learning that held by the second mover. We find evidence of high ingratiation indices, as opinion conformity is rewarded. However, second movers reward conformity less when it is common knowledge that opinions can be manipulated strategically. Introducing a monetary cost for changing opinion reduces ingratiation. Introducing performance-related pay for the second mover makes ingratiation less rewarding but does not eliminate it completely. Reducing the noise in the measurement of ability has little effect.

When the assignment of incentives is uncertain, we study how the regularity and frequency of rewards and risk attitudes influence participation and effort. We contrast three incentive schemes in a real-effort experiment in which individuals decide when to quit : a continuous incentive scheme and two intermittent ones, fixed and random. In all treatments, we introduce a regime shift by withdrawing monetary rewards after the same unknown number of periods. In such an ambiguous environment, we show that less able and more risk averse players are less persistent in effort. Intermittent incentives lead to a greater persistence of effort, while continuous incentives entail exit as soon as payment stops. Randomness increases both earlier and later exiting. This selection effect in terms of ability and risk attitudes combined with the impact of intermittent rewards on persistence lead to an increase in mean performance after the regime shift when incentives are intermittent.

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Using a field experiment in China, we study whether migration status is correlated with attitudes toward risk, ambiguity, and competitiveness. Our subjects include migrants and non-migrants. We find that, migrants exhibit no differences from non-migrants in risk and ambiguity preferences elicited using pairs of lotteries . however, migrants are significantly more likely to enter competition in the presence of strategic uncertainty when they expect competitive entries from others. Our results suggest that migration may be driven more by a stronger belief in one's ability to succeed in an uncertain and competitive environment than by risk attitudes under state uncertainty.

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We use skin conductance responses and self-reported hedonic valence to study the emotional basis of cooperation and punishment in a social dilemma. We argue that the availability of sanctions sets in motion a “virtuous emotional circle” that accompanies cooperation. Emotional reaction to free riding leads cooperators to apply sanctions. In response, and in addition to the monetary consequences of receiving sanctions, the negative emotions experienced by the free-riders when punished lead them to increase their subsequent level of cooperation. The outcome is an increased level of cooperation that becomes a new norm. Therefore, emotions sustain both the use of altruistic punishment and cooperation.

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Unethical behavior within organizations is not rare. We investigate experimentally the role of status-seeking behavior in sabotage and cheating activities aiming at improving one’s performance ranking in a flat-wage environment. We find that average effort is higher when individuals are informed about their relative performance. However, ranking feedback also favors disreputable behavior. Some individuals do not hesitate to incur a cost to improve their rank by sabotaging others’ work or by increasing artificially their own performance. Introducing sabotage opportunities has a strong detrimental effect on performance. Therefore, ranking incentives should be used with care. Inducing group identity discourages sabotage among peers but increases in-group rivalry.

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Using a field experiment in China, we study whether migration status is correlated with attitudes toward risk, ambiguity, and competitiveness. Our subjects include migrants and non-migrants. We find that, migrants exhibit no differences from non-migrants in risk and ambiguity preferences elicited using pairs of lotteries . however, migrants are significantly more likely to enter competition in the presence of strategic uncertainty when they expect competitive entries from others. Our results suggest that migration may be driven more by a stronger belief in one's ability to succeed in an uncertain and competitive environment than by risk attitudes under state uncertainty.

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Unethical behavior within organizations is not rare. We investigate experimentally the role of status-seeking behavior in sabotage and cheating activities aiming at improving one’s performance ranking in a flat-wage environment. We find that average effort is higher when individuals are informed about their relative performance. However, ranking feedback also favors disreputable behavior. Some individuals do not hesitate to incur a cost to improve their rank by sabotaging others’ work or by increasing artificially their own performance. Introducing sabotage opportunities has a strong detrimental effect on performance. Therefore, ranking incentives should be used with care. Inducing group identity discourages sabotage among peers but increases in-group rivalry.

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We investigate how different forms of scrutiny affect dishonesty, using Gneezy’s (2005) deception game. We add a third player whose interests are aligned with those of the sender. We find that lying behavior is not sensitive to revealing the sender’s identity to the observer. The option for observers to communicate with the sender, and the option to reveal the sender’s lies to the receiver also do not affect lying behavior. Even more striking, senders whose identity is revealed to their observer do not lie less when their interests are misaligned with those of the observer.

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In times of economic crisis, the needs of the State increase and the tax base shrinks. It is therefore common to see the fight against the various forms of fraud that reduce public revenues resurface in the public debate. In this context, tax fraud is regularly contrasted with social fraud and the discussion often focuses on the relative importance of the two. Tax fraud is the illegal misuse of a tax system in order to avoid contributing to the financing of public expenses, and social fraud is the evasion of social security deductions or the undue receipt of social benefits. The two forms of fraud sometimes overlap. Although it is difficult to measure precisely the two forms of fraud, it is generally estimated that tax fraud represents a much greater loss of revenue for the State than social fraud. However, it is important to note that these two types of fraud certainly emanate from populations with different characteristics in terms of activity and resources. It is therefore interesting to try to identify the explanatory factors of these two types of fraud, to know if they respond to the same economic springs and moral imperatives. Populations or groups are often stigmatized for practicing one or the other type of fraud. This article proposes to explain the factors leading to these two types of fraud, based on data obtained from a laboratory experiment. Because of its control requirements and its artificiality, laboratory experimentation can contribute to providing some answers. Indeed, by choosing appropriate parameter values, it allows for a direct comparison of the two types of fraud from an economic point of view in order to isolate the non-economic dimensions of decision-making.

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We experimentally study how receiving information about tax compliance of others affects individuals’ occupational choices and subsequent evading decisions. In one treatment individuals receive information about the highest tax evasion rates of others in past experimental sessions with no such social information. in another treatment they receive information about the lowest tax evasion rates observed in the past sessions with no such social information. We observe an asymmetric effect of social information on tax compliance. Whereas examples of high compliance do not have any disciplining effect, we find evidence that examples of low compliance significantly increase tax evasion for certain audit probabilities. No major differences are found across countries.

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We study how individuals adjust their judgment of fairness and unfairness when they are in the position of spectators before and after making real decisions, and how this adjustment depends on the actions they take in the game. We find that norms that appear universal instead take into account the players’ bargaining power. Also, individuals adjust their judgments after playing the game for real money, when they behaved more selfishly and only in games where choices have no strategic consequence. We interpret this possibly self-deceptive adjustment of judgments to actions as moral hypocrisy. This behavior appears produced by the attempt to strike a compromise between self-image and payoffs, so as to release oneself of one's responsibility for selfish behavior.

This thesis has 3 main chapters. Chapters 1 and 2 present experimental results from a coordination game proposed by Rosenthal (1981) and Beard and Beil (1994). This game has two Nash equilibria: the first is efficient, the second relies on the use of weakly dominated strategies. In laboratory experiments based on this game, players very often fail to make decisions that simultaneously maximize the payoffs of all parties. These failures of efficient coordination arise from two behaviors: (i) subjects doubt that other players will seek to maximize their own payoff, and (ii) these doubts are, in some cases, justified. In Chapter 1, we present a new experiment that tests whether this behavior is due to the inequality of payoffs between players (which persists in most laboratory implementations conducted so far). Our data clearly show that the failure to maximize personal payoffs, as well as the fear that others might behave in this way, does not stem from inequality aversion. This result is robust to variations in decision salience, learning by repetition, and cultural differences between France and Poland. We then study the impact of information on strategic behavior in this game. The experimental treatments introduce three mechanisms that improve the level of information in the game: simple repetition, cheap-talk messages, and observation of the partner's past actions. Repetition learning increases the frequencies of the most efficient outcome, as well as the risk of the most costly strategic mismatch. Furthermore, this type of learning is replaced by individual cues. Similar to previous studies, we show that signals help predict partners' intentions, which reduces the frequency of coordination failures. Nevertheless, in contrast to these studies, we find that the transmission of information between partners, whether using messages or observation, is not sufficient to significantly increase the overall efficiency of outcomes. This occurs primarily because information transmission does not restrict the use of dominated strategies. In Chapter 2, we propose an experiment that applies commitment theory, established in social psychology, in the economic context of the coordination game. In this environment, the coordination game, which takes place with communication, is preceded by the oath stage where subjects have the opportunity to solemnly commit to telling the truth. Three main results emerge. First, in the presence of the oath, coordination on the most effective balance increases by almost 50% to a level of 75%. Second, with the oath procedure, players become more honest: they send messages that more often match what they actually do in the game. Moreover, the actions they choose are also more effective. In one, the players who receive the messages become more confident and they more often choose an action that is in line with the intentions that are sent to them.

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The first trial uses a neuroeconomic experiment to compare the effect of social exposure on two types of pro-social behaviors: doing good and avoiding doing harm. We find that image gains from visible acts of generosity are computed as rewards in both cases. Selfish decisions without negative image consequences are computed differently: not doing good (and thus saving money) correlates with brain regions related to reward, whereas doing bad (and thus gaining money) correlates with brain regions related to punishment anticipation and moral disgust.The second trial investigates how information about the true effectiveness of charities (and its social visibility) affects the contributions of small donors. We find that individuals ignore poor performance of charities when the donation is covered by anonymity but increase their contributions to charities that perform better than expected. However, when the amount donated and the recipient's effectiveness are public knowledge, donors motivated by social image concerns treat the quantity and quality of their donations as proxies.The third essay studies the effects of control in principal agent relationships where monetary interests are aligned. By comparing direct control with general impersonal rules, we show that direct control generates more hidden costs on the agent side than impersonal rules. At the same time, managers tend to exercise less authority when rules are impersonal, as this forces them to signal their greed even when it is not necessary.

This paper experimentally investigates if and how people's competitiveness depends on their own gender and on the gender of people with whom they interact. Participants are given information about the gender of the co-participant they are matched with, they then choose between a tournament or a piece rate payment scheme, and finally perform a real task. As already observed in the literature, we find that significantly more men than women choose the tournament. The gender of the co-participant directly influences men's choices (men compete less against other men than against women), but only when the gender information is made sufficiently salient. A higher predicted competitiveness of women induces more competition. Giving stronger tournament incentives, or allowing the participants to choose the gender of their co-participant, increases women's willingness to compete, but does not close the gender gap in competitiveness.

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With a market entry game inspired by Camerer and Lovallo (1999), we study the attitudes of junior and senior employees towards strategic uncertainty and competition. Seniors exhibit higher entry rates compared to juniors, especially when the market capacity is not too low or when earnings from entry depend on relative performance. This difference persists after controlling for attitudes towards non-strategic uncertainty and for beliefs on others' competitiveness and on relative ability. Seniors are more willing to compete when they predict a higher number of competitors. This contradicts the stereotype of less competitive older employees.

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With a market entry game inspired by Camerer and Lovallo (1999), we study the attitudes of junior and senior employees towards strategic uncertainty and competition. Seniors exhibit higher entry rates compared to juniors, especially when the market capacity is not too low or when earnings from entry depend on relative performance. This difference persists after controlling for attitudes towards non-strategic uncertainty and for beliefs on others' competitiveness and on relative ability. Seniors are more willing to compete when they predict a higher number of competitors. This contradicts the stereotype of less competitive older employees.

The goal of this thesis was to study the brain mechanisms underlying social decision making in healthy subjects, the influence of gonadal steroid hormones on cognitive flexibility, and the brain dysfunctions underlying reward devaluation in Parkinson's disease. In our first protocol, we investigated how making a decision for oneself or for a group to which we belong, and when faced with a single individual or group, influences our inequity aversion and the brain regions engaged. Our results showed the influence of two distinct brain networks in inequity aversion during these social interactions, defining a brain signature for the "interpersonal/intergroup discontinuity" effect. Our second study aimed to determine the influence of hormone replacement therapy on cognitive flexibility in recently menopausal women. Numerous studies have shown a deleterious effect of hormone supplementation on cognitive functions if it is started late after menopause. However, a recent hypothesis has proposed that hormonal treatment may be beneficial and neuroprotective against psychiatric illnesses if started for a short time after the onset of menopause. In a study combining pharmacology and fMRI, we demonstrated modulation by hormone treatment on regions involved in cognitive control in recently menopausal women. Our latest study evaluates the effect of dopaminergic treatment and the presence of a specific impulse control disorder (i.e., hypersexuality) in patients with Parkinson's disease. Our preliminary results showed the influence of these factors on specific frontal and subcortical regions involved in choices, requiring the evaluation of different costs (i.e., effort/expectation) leading to greater or lesser rewards. Our thesis demonstrates the value of combining pharmacological and fMRI studies to understand how hormonal and dopaminergic treatments influence the brain mechanisms of individual and social decision.

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Experimental studies of social dilemmas have shown that while the existence of a sanctioning institution improves cooperation within groups, it also has a detrimental impact on group earnings in the short run. Could the introduction of pre-play threats to punish have enough of a beneficial impact on cooperation, while not incurring the cost associated with actual punishment, so that they increase overall welfare? We report an experiment in which players can issue non-binding threats to punish others based on their contribution levels to a public good. After observing others' actual contributions, they choose their actual punishment level. We find that threats increase the level of contributions significantly. Efficiency is improved, but only in the latter periods. However, the possibility of sanctioning differences between threatened and actual punishment leads to lower threats, cooperation, and welfare, restoring them to levels equal to or below the levels attained in the absence of threats.

We experimentally manipulate two aspects of the cognitive environment -- cognitive depletion and recent sugar intake -- and estimate their effects on individuals' time preferences in a way that allows us to identify the structural parameters of a simple (α,β,δ) intertemporal utility function for each person. We find that individuals exposed to a prior cognitive load, individuals who consumed a sugared drink and individuals who consumed a sugar-free drink all defer more income than a control group exposed to none of these conditions. Structural estimates show that all three effects are driven entirely by increases in the intertemporal substitution elasticity parameter (α). Together, our results suggest that at least for complex economic decisions like intertemporal financial choice, the 'attention/focusing' effect of both prior cognitively demanding activity and prior assignment of a primary reward can improve decision-making.

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In times of economic crisis, the needs of the State increase and the tax base shrinks. it is therefore common to see the fight against the various forms of fraud that reduce public revenue resurface in the public debate. In this context, tax fraud is regularly contrasted with social fraud and the discussion often focuses on the relative importance of the two. Tax fraud is defined as the illegal misuse of a tax system in order to avoid contributing to the financing of public expenses, and social fraud is defined as the evasion of social security contributions or the undue receipt of social benefits. The two forms of fraud sometimes overlap. Although it is difficult to measure precisely the two forms of fraud, it is generally estimated that tax fraud represents a much greater loss of revenue for the State than social fraud. However, it is important to note that these two types of fraud certainly emanate from populations with different characteristics in terms of activity and resources. It is therefore interesting to try to identify the explanatory factors of these two types of fraud, to know if they respond to the same economic springs and moral imperatives. Populations or groups are often stigmatized for practicing one or the other type of fraud. This article proposes to explain the factors leading to these two types of fraud, based on data obtained from a laboratory experiment. Because of its control requirements and its artificiality, laboratory experimentation can contribute to providing some answers. Indeed, by choosing appropriate parameter values, it allows for a direct comparison of the two types of fraud from an economic point of view in order to isolate the non-economic dimensions of decision-making.

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In social dilemmas, leading a team by making heroic efforts may prove costly, especially when the followers are not adequately motivated to make similar sacrifices. Attempting to shed light on what drives people to lead, we devise a two-stage public good experiment with endogenous timing. We show that leading by making generous contributions is widespread and relatively persistent. At least three motives explain this behavior. Some use leadership strategically to distill personal gains, with the expectation that others will respond by being at least as generous. Others are more altruistic, volunteering to lead even though this may come at a personal cost. Yet for another fraction of volunteers, a concern for maintaining a positive social image appears to be responsible. We also find that voluntary leaders are not necessarily more influential than randomly-chosen leaders.

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Does income inequality affect the provision of public goods? Warr established a neutrality theorem in 1983: under certain conditions, a marginal redistribution of income between agents does not affect the quantity of public goods provided by their voluntary contributions. The generalizations of this result by Bergstrom et al (1986) have made it possible to better understand this phenomenon: neutral redistributions are of "small" magnitude, so that agents whose income has been cut always have the possibility of maintaining their expenditure on private goods, and adjustments to individual contributions leave the aggregate contribution to the public good unchanged. Itaya et al (1997) have investigated the welfare consequences of non-neutral redistribution. In the first two chapters of this thesis we test these predictions in the laboratory with a public good game with quadratic utilities. The first chapter considers a "small" redistribution that should not lead to a change in the quantity of the public good. In contrast, in chapter 2, the redistribution is of such magnitude that it affects the quantity of public good supplied and the welfare of society. Although we find some theoretical predictions in the laboratory, notably concerning the modification or not of the quantity of public good produced and of well-being, the predictions concerning individual behaviour and gains are rarely verified. In particular, we observe that, following the modification of their income, some players reduce or increase their contribution less than the theory predicts and that poor agents over-contribute. Finally, it seems that the emergence of inequalities does not affect behavior in the same way as when these inequalities are pre-existing, and thus that the direction of redistribution, depending on whether it creates or reduces inequalities, matters. In Chapter 3, we look specifically at an inequality-creating redistribution in a linear public good game and examine whether men and women respond to this change in the same way and what consequences this has for the quantity of public good provided. We show that when women benefit from the redistribution, the quantity of public good produced decreases. It also appears that behavior is modified when subjects know the gender of those who have become richer.

For firms concerned with the phenomenon of aging, the relationship between the age structure of the workforce and the wage and productivity profiles is a key element addressed in this thesis. The first chapter reviews various theoretical concepts and describes the empirical results with respect to the wage and productivity profile as a function of age. The empirical study presented in Chapter Two assesses the marginal productivity profile by age. We consider the labor force by both skill (low-skilled, high-skilled) and age (young, middle-aged, old). We estimate, on French firm data, a nested CES production function that allows for imperfect substitution between different categories of workers. Among the main results, we find that labor productivity by age depends strongly on the workers' skill category and industry. Chapter three analyzes the behavior of juniors and seniors, in particular their attitudes towards risk, self-confidence and propensity to compete. For this purpose, we conducted an experiment with Swiss bankers. We find that, although the two generations do not differ significantly in their attitudes towards risk and ambiguity, the seniors show a higher propensity to compete. This decision is clearly influenced by information about the age of other participants. Furthermore, both generations maximize their profits in age-balanced groups.

This thesis presents three experiments on employee performance appraisal.Appraisal is a very important management tool in an environment where the employer has an imperfect initial belief of the performance of its employees. Among other things, it allows the employer to improve its information on the performance of its employees. The first test focuses on the initial phase of the appraisal process: How does the employer revise his belief about his employee's performance using an imperfect signal? The results show that, on average, the use of an imperfect signal helps subjects to identify an uncertain state of nature. However, subjects revise their belief in a non-optimal way when the signal confirms their initial belief.The second step in the evaluation process is the appraisal interview, during which the employer can transfer information to the employee. This feedback can be manipulated by the employer. The second chapter examines how the employer manipulates the evaluation and the impact of this manipulation on the employee's choice of effort. The results show that employers manipulate the information given to their employees who respond by increasing their effort. Furthermore, the manipulation that overestimates the employee's ability is significantly more used than the manipulation that decreases it.The final chapter focuses on assessment bias using a real effort experiment. While the majority of raters manipulate the appraisal to increase their payoff, the results show that guilt plays an important role in the decision to lie or not.

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.

The thesis is structured around three chapters in theoretical economics and non-cooperative game theory. The first two chapters, although independent, deal with competitive situations between economic agents that take place over several periods of time called tournaments. In the first chapter, we look for the conditions under which it is optimal for the principal to give the agents a logit probability of winning. This probability of winning is therefore endogenous and corresponds to the number of optimal monitoring periods for the principal. In the second chapter, we give the tournament administrator the possibility to choose the bonus allocation mechanism (for example by choosing the composition of a committee). In particular, we show that the bonus to be given to the winner is minimized when the random allocation mechanism of the prize does not always reward the most productive agent over all the T-periods of the competition. The third chapter is set in the framework of non-cooperative game theory and deals with the epistemic justification of concepts prevalent to the coordination of players on a particular set of strategies called the p-best response set, the iterated p-dominant Nash equilibrium and the Curb set. In particular, we assume that players have p-beliefs about the amount of prudence of their opponent and at the same time believe that the opponent is a maximizing agent of his subjective expected utility. We show that players satisfy these assumptions if and only if they choose strategies restricted to a certain class of so-called p-best sets.

Active policies maintain incentives to seek employment while promoting the acquisition of new skills. In France, conversion agreements help people who have been made redundant to reintegrate into the workforce. The evaluation of the scheme focuses on four dimensions. The econometric analysis shows that the candidates are not the individuals who have the most difficulty in finding a new job (educated, qualified, low spatial constraints). Three criteria of reintegration quality are explored: duration of unemployment, nature of the contract and salary. The econometric models control for selectivity on the unobservables associated with the transition to the agreement. The program has positive effects on these three efficiency indicators, but only for a small proportion of beneficiaries. A majority of non-participants would have had an increased probability of returning to stable employment if they had participated. The program was poorly targeted.

The laws of June 13, 1998, known as the Aubry 1 law, and January 19, 2000, known as the Aubry 2 law, aim to reduce the working hours of full-time employees in order to promote job creation. They represent a far-reaching change that affects working hours, remuneration, the structure of the workforce and the organization of companies. This upheaval requires employees and their employers to modify their individual labor supply and demand strategies and involves them in a process of negotiation on working time, wages, employment and work organization. This thesis proposes an ex post microeconomic evaluation of these different changes, using theoretical models and econometric refutations. The first part of this thesis studies the individual strategies of employees and firms with respect to the 35-hour workweek. First, the impact of the reduction in working time on individual and family labor supply is analyzed (chapter 1), and then the determinants of job creation in firms that have switched to 35 hours are identified (chapter 2). The econometric analyses are based on the 2000 EMPLOYMENT and 2001 PASSAGES surveys. The main results show that on the labor supply side, employees whose spouses switch to 35 hours tend, all else being equal, to work fewer hours. On the labor demand side, more than 40% of the unadjusted difference in job creation between establishments that have switched to 35 hours and those that have not can be explained by disparities in the implementation of the RTT. The second part takes into account interactions between employees and employers and studies the impact of firms' organizational choices on the wage bargaining process. The decision to introduce a modulation/annualization system when implementing the reduction in working time and its impact on wages and working conditions are first analyzed (chapter 3). Then, the process of distribution of the quasi-rent between employees and employers associated with time flexibility and state aid is studied (chapter 4). According to the theoretical model and econometric refutations, the decision to introduce a modulation agreement is a function of (i) the volatility of demand, (ii) the trade-off of employees between wages and working conditions, (iii) the magnitude of the costs associated with this organizational change (fixed costs and negotiation with employees), and (iv) the organizational choices of competitors. The second proposed bargaining model explains the wage differences between insiders and outsiders at 35 hours by the process of distribution of the quasi-rent. Three factors determine the distribution of this quasi-rent: the disutility at work of employees in the flexible organization with and without net job creation, the relative bargaining power of new hires, and the marginal rate of substitution of workers between wages and working conditions. Finally, we show that the diffusion of the 35-hour workweek in the economy may indeed generate wage inequalities between full-time workers, but may be more satisfactory for all workers than a specialization of the economy in part-time work.

In recent years, the literature on peer pressure as applied to work teams has modeled mutual control by assuming that the peer pressure environment boils down to the control effort exerted by agents over other team members. The purpose of this thesis is to go beyond existing models of mutual control by considering that agents' decisions also relate to sanctioning decisions. Since punishing is costly, agents, rational and maximizing their monetary gains, have no incentive to punish their peers. Consequently, without a credible threat, cooperation cannot emerge. The proposed theoretical models are tested using experimental economics. The experiments conducted test a production team relationship where agents have the possibility to punish their peers. The results of the experiments show that subjects do not hesitate to sanction stowaways and that the opportunity to sanction significantly increases the level of cooperation. The experimental results also show that the effectiveness of peer pressure is strongly correlated with the cost as well as the nature of the sanctions (monetary, non-monetary, exclusion). The high level of cooperation when subjects have the opportunity to sanction each other is explained by the agents' desire to avoid both the monetary consequences of sanctions and the disapproval of their peers. Furthermore, two main reasons are given to explain sanctioning behavior. The first reason is that agents sanction their peers in order to encourage them to cooperate more in the future. The second reason is based on agents' distributional considerations, and self-centered inequality aversion explains punishment by the desire to reduce differences in earnings. Cooperation can then occur if agents are sufficiently averse to inequality.

The fundamental lesson of Hicks' paradox was to highlight the need to anchor bargaining in time. The impossibility of justifying the emergence and perpetuation of strikes in a framework where agents are rational, perfectly and completely informed, has led to the development of sequential bargaining models with asymmetric information. In these models, the duration of a strike is synonymous with the acquisition of information within the firm. During the strike, the agents adjust their respective demands so that they become compatible. The duration of the strike then covers the time needed for the agents to become informed and to reveal their information, and is part of a bargaining process. However, this bargaining process remains unfavourable to the union. The union has an incentive to reduce the risk of a strike by improving the quality of its information. By observing previous negotiations in other firms, it is able to adapt its demands. The dissemination of information reduces the risk of strike action and increases the usefulness of the social partners. The strike, which is costly for some, is also a vector of information, thus reducing costs for others. In the case of trade union pluralism, the benefits linked to the dissemination of information remain. The econometric estimation of the model on French data, however, highlights the counteracting effects of the diffusion of information. The experimental analysis shows that unions revise their demands downwards when there has been a conflict during previous negotiations. However, the risk of strike action does not decrease. The experiment reveals the importance of benevolent considerations. The strike then appears as much as a revelation of a bad state of nature, as a reaction to a refusal of recognition by the employer. The games of duration make it possible to retranscribe the negotiation process as a whole. The strike appears as a possible second stage of the negotiation, the first stage being a waiting phase. These models make it possible to take into account the efficiency relations within the firm, as well as the recognition dimension of the demands. The duration of the negotiation process is no longer caused by delays in the acquisition of information but by dynamic inconsistencies. Econometric tests on French data allow us to justify the relevance of this type of modeling. The strike is only one stage in the bargaining process, which is itself integrated into an employment relationship made up of interactions within the firm and between firms.