More effort with less pay: On information avoidance, belief design and performance

In a tedious real effort task, subjects know that their piece rate is either low or ten times higher. When subjects are informed about their piece rate realization, they adapt their performance. One third of subjects nevertheless forego this instrumental information when given the choice | and perform stunningly well. Agents who are uninformed regarding their piece rate tend to outperform all others, even those who know that their piece rate is high. This also holds for enforced instead of self-selected information avoidance. All our findings can be captured by a model of optimally distorted expectations following Brunnermeier and Parker (2005)

Designing contests between heterogeneous contestants: An experimental study of tie-breaks and bid-caps in all-pay auctions

A well-known theoretical result in the contest literature is that greater heterogeneity decreases investments of contestants because of the “discouragement effect.” Levelling the playing field by favouring weaker contestants through strict bid-caps and favourable tie-breaking rules can reduce discouragement and increase the designer\u27s revenue. We test these predictions in a laboratory experiment. Our data confirm that placing bid-caps and using favourable tie-breaking rules significantly diminishes discouragement of weaker contestants. However, its impact on revenues is muted by the fact that the encouragement of weaker contestants is offset by stronger contestants competing less aggressively, even when not predicted by theory. We discuss deviations from the Nash predictions in light of different behavioural approaches

Designing contests between heterogeneous contestants: An experimental study of tie-breaks and bid-caps in all-pay auctions

A well-known theoretical result in the contest literature is that greater heterogeneity decreases performance of contestants because of the “discouragement effect.” Leveling the playing field by favoring weaker contestants through bid-caps and favorable tie-breaking rules can reduce the discouragement effect and increase the designer’s revenue. We test these predictions in an experiment. Our data show that indeed, strengthening weaker contestants through tie-breaks and bid-caps significantly diminishes the iscouragement effect. Bid-caps can also improve revenue. Most deviations from Nash equilibrium can be explained by the level-k model of reasoning

Optical pumping and readout of bismuth hyperfine states in silicon for atomic clock applications

The push for a semiconductor-based quantum information technology has renewed interest in the spin states and optical transitions of shallow donors in silicon, including the donor bound exciton transitions in the near-infrared and the Rydberg, or hydrogenic, transitions in the mid-infrared. The deepest group V donor in silicon, bismuth, has a large zero-field ground state hyperfine splitting, comparable to that of rubidium, upon which the now-ubiquitous rubidium atomic clock time standard is based. Here we show that the ground state hyperfine populations of bismuth can be read out using the mid-infrared Rydberg transitions, analogous to the optical readout of the rubidium ground state populations upon which rubidium clock technology is based. We further use these transitions to demonstrate strong population pumping by resonant excitation of the bound exciton transitions, suggesting several possible approaches to a solid-state atomic clock using bismuth in silicon, or eventually in enriched 28Si

More effort with less pay: on information avoidance, belief design and performance

In a tedious real effort task, subjects know that their piece rate is either low or ten times higher. When subjects are informed about their piece rate realization, they adapt their performance. One third of subjects nevertheless forego this instrumental information when given the choice - and perform stunningly well. Agents who are uninformed regarding their piece rate tend to outperform all others, even those who know that their piece rate is high. This also holds for enforced instead of self-selected information avoidance. All our findings can be captured by a model of optimally distorted expectations following Brunnermeier and Parker (2005). (author's abstract

Feedback, self-esteem and performance in organizations.

Abstract We examine whether private feedback about relative performance can mitigate moral hazard in competitive environments by modifying the agents' self-esteem. In our experimental setting people work harder and expect to rank better when told they may learn their ranking, relative to cases when feedback will not be provided. Individuals who ranked better than expected decrease output but expect a better rank in the future, while those who ranked worse than expected increase output but lower their future rank expectations. Feedback helps create a ratcheting effect in productivity, mainly due to the fight for dominance at the top of the rank hierarchy. Our findings suggest that organizations can improve employee productivity by changing the likelihood of feedback, the reference group used to calculate relative performance, and the informativeness of the feedback message

Optical pumping and readout of bismuth hyperfine states in silicon for atomic clock applications

The push for a semiconductor-based quantum information technology has renewed interest in the spin states and optical transitions of shallow donors in silicon, including the donor bound exciton transitions in the near-infrared and the Rydberg, or hydrogenic, transitions in the mid-infrared. The deepest group V donor in silicon, bismuth, has a large zero-field ground state hyperfine splitting, comparable to that of rubidium, upon which the now-ubiquitous rubidium atomic clock time standard is based. Here we show that the ground state hyperfine populations of bismuth can be read out using the mid-infrared Rydberg transitions, analogous to the optical readout of the rubidium ground state populations upon which rubidium clock technology is based. We further use these transitions to demonstrate strong population pumping by resonant excitation of the bound exciton transitions, suggesting several possible approaches to a solid-state atomic clock using bismuth in silicon, or eventually in enriched 28Si