Creative teams drive the idea-economy, yet the determinants of a team's ability to create new ideas are not universally agreed upon. Group-level diversity has gained the most traction as an explanation, where a team's performance is usually attributed to diversity over observed characteristics such as race, gender, or functional expertise. Most agree that these characteristics are not especially important, but rather serve as an indicator of diversity in experiences, which is the actual mechanism that improves team ability. We formalize and test if experientially diverse groups produce more ideas. Because group assignment to projects in the field is rarely exogenous, and experiential diversity is not measured in observational data, we use a laboratory experiment to test our proposal. We find that experientially diverse teams create more ideas and also find no additional effect for gender, racial, socioeconomic, or personality diversity. Our general finding for why diversity may be important indicates that if a correlation exists between characteristic diversity and experiential diversity, the characteristically diverse team will have a higher ability. This generalization can be used to unify divergent results from prior studies and can help explain how dissimilar corporate diversity policies could be equally successful.JEL Codes: C92, J24, M50, O30, O31, O34 Wilson for very helpful suggestions. Finally, this research would not be possible without the help of Michelle Raines in coordinating laboratory use.Given the role innovation plays in economic growth, scholars have long sought to understand how new and better ideas are created. One strand of literature posits that existing ideas are combined to form the new ideas that are the driving force behind modern economic growth (e.g., Weitzman 1998).If new creative ideas are the product of one's knowledge and experiences, then greater diversity in knowledge and experiences leads to greater creativity and greater innovation. In problem-solving contexts, it has been shown that teams can be more productive than individuals (e.g., Cooper and Kagel;2006), and are increasingly used in creativity-centered applications (Jaravel, Petkova, and Bell, 2018;Singh and Fleming, 2010;Wuchty, Jones and Uzzi, 2007;Uzzi et al., 2013). Companies wishing to take advantage of this insight have touted their diversity policies; however, the issue is not settled even among innovative companies.Consider the dissimilar approaches taken by Bell Labs, originally AT&T's research lab, and Google. Bell Labs established a culture where, "eccentric theorists mingled with hands-on engineers, gnarly mechanics, and businesslike problem-solvers, encouraging the cross-fertilization of theory with engineering" (Isaacson 48). Google's Project Aristotle was meant to understand team effectiveness, where their findings were summed up by one of their analysts as: "We were pretty confident that we'd find the perfect mix of individual traits and skills necessary for a stellar team -take one Rhodes Scholar, two...

If those with political power benefit from corrupt institutions, rulers might not adopt the rule of law so the ruling class can command a larger share of a smaller pie. An empirical analysis reveals that the size of government is larger in those countries that enforce the rule of law. If government expenditures provide some measure of the ability of the ruling class to command resources, this suggests that those with political power could benefit from imposing a fairer and more objective legal structure. Another conjecture is that those in power maintain corrupt governments to pay off their supporters and enhance their ability to remain in power. However, the rule of law is also positively associated with political stability, so better enforcement of the rule of law also enhances the ability of incumbent governments to remain in power. *

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A peculiar social order exists in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, where the drug factions that control them permit humanitarian activity which curbs drug use and faction affiliation. This article provides an institutional perspective on faction control of the favelas where a lack of government presence fosters faction legitimacy among residents. Allowing humanitarian organisations to operate in the favelas creates common knowledge among residents within a large coordination game where factions signal a desire to cooperate. Legitimisation among residents improves faction profits, while residents benefit from ‘law and order’, public services and public goods that are not provided by the state.

Creativity and innovation go hand in hand, and understanding sources of creativity will expand organizational innovative capacity. This study explores the impact that characteristics have on creativity using divergent‐thinking experiments. I hypothesize that their influence stems from their effect on the experiences individuals acquire throughout life based on preferences, opportunities, and constraints. I find that gender, socioeconomic background, and exposure to other cultures are associated with personal experiences. In turn, experience is positively associated with greater creativity. I also explore creative style and its impact on creativity and find that having an experimental creative style positively correlates with creativity.

Punishment has been shown to be an effective reinforcement mechanism. Intentional or not, punishment will likely generate spillover effects that extend beyond one's immediate decision environment, and these spillovers are not as well understood. We seek to understand these secondary spillover effects in a controlled lab setting using a standard social dilemma: the voluntary contributions mechanism. We find that spillovers occur when others observe punishment outside their own social dilemma. However, the direction of the spillover effect depends crucially on personal punishment history and whether one is personally exempt from punishment or not.

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-Abstract-This paper uses experiments to explore electoral accountability in a legislative system that favors seniority. Voters face a trade-off between pork barrel transfers and policy representation. Term limits are tested as a mechanism to reduce the cost of searching for a legislator who better represents voters on policy, as well as reducing the resulting asymmetric distribution of income. Subjects" preferences on abortion are used in an innovative means of capturing incumbents" policy choices where subject legislators vote to determine whether a donation is allocated to either a prochoice or pro-life foundation.JEL classification codes: C91, C92, D72, D89, P16