Summary Sleep deprivation has been shown to alter decision‐making abilities. The majority of research has utilized fairly complex tasks with the goal of emulating ’real‐life’ scenarios. Here, we use a Lottery Choice Task (LCT) which assesses risk and ambiguity preference for both decisions involving potential gains and those involving potential losses. We hypothesized that one night of sleep deprivation would make subjects more risk seeking in both gains and losses. Both a control group and an experimental group took the LCT on two consecutive days, with an intervening night of either sleep or sleep deprivation. The control group demonstrated that there was no effect of repeated administration of the LCT. For the experimental group, results showed significant interactions of night (normal sleep versus total sleep deprivation, TSD) by frame (gains versus losses), which demonstrate that following as little as 23 h of TSD, the prototypical response to decisions involving risk is altered. Following TSD, subjects were willing to take more risk than they ordinarily would when they were considering a gain, but less risk than they ordinarily would when they were considering a loss. For ambiguity preferences, there seems to be no direct effect of TSD. These findings suggest that, overall, risk preference is moderated by TSD, but whether an individual is willing to take more or less risk than when well‐rested depends on whether the decision is framed in terms of gains or losses.

"Increased traceability of food and food ingredients through the agri-food chain has featured in recent industry initiatives in the Canadian livestock sector and is an important facet of the new Canadian Agricultural Policy Framework (APF). While traceability is usually implicitly associated with ensuring food safety and delivering quality assurances, there has been very little economic analysis of the functions of traceability systems and the value that consumers place on traceability assurances. This paper examines the economic incentives for implementing traceability systems in the meat and livestock sector. Experimental auctions are used to assess the willingness to pay of Canadian consumers for a traceability assurance, a food safety assurance, and an on-farm production method assurance for beef and pork products. Results from these laboratory market experiments provide insights into the relative value for Canadian consumers of traceability and quality assurances. Traceability, in the absence of quality verification, is of limited value to individual consumers. Bundling traceability with quality assurances has the potential to deliver more value." Copyright 2005 Canadian Agricultural Economics Society.

Estimated negative substitution effects on work hours question the empirical validity of the classical labor supply model. Estimates are reconciled by allowing a dual choice of hours and effort for piecerate workers. In such a model, these negative substitution effects result from substituting on-and off-the-job leisure. We test our model using controlled experimentation on human subjects. These experiments, while not naturally occurring environments, represent real economic choices and can generate data unavailable elsewhere (e.g., effort data). The results support our model, and they have implications both for labor management and for empirical research focusing only on the hours choice.The classical static model of the labor-leisure choice offers positive compensated wage effects on hours of work as its main testable implication. Previous attempts to test this hypothesis with field data have cast doubt on the empirical validity of the static labor supply model due to the frequency of negative estimated compensated wage elasticities. A limitation of the model is that it views the choice of hours of work as the only I would like to thank Jim Cox, Ron Oaxaca, Leslie Stratton,

Agency theory assumes that tighter monitoring by the principal should motivate the agent to raise his effort level whereas the "crowding-out" literature suggests that it may reduce the overall work effort. These two assertions are not necessarily contradictory provided that the nature of the employment relationship is taken into account (Frey, 1993). Based upon a real-task laboratory experiment, our results show that principals are not trustful enough to refrain from monitoring the agents, and most of the agents react to the disciplining effect of monitoring. However we find also some evidence that intrinsic motivation is crowded out when monitoring is above a certain threshold. We identify that both interpersonal principal/agent links and concerns for the distribution of output payoff are important for the emergence of this crowding out effect.

SUMMARYAlthough it is well known that sleep loss results in poor judgement and decisions, little is known about the influence of social context in these processes. Sixteen healthy young adults underwent three games involving bargaining (ÔUltimatumÕ and ÔDictatorÕ) and trust, following total sleep deprivation (TSD) and during rested wakefulness (RW), in a repeated-measures, counterbalanced design. To control for repeatability, a second group (n = 16) was tested twice under RW conditions. Paired anonymously with another individual, participants made their simple social interaction decisions facing real monetary incentives. For bargaining, following TSD participants were more likely to reject unequal-split offers made by their partner, despite the rejection resulting in a zero monetary payoff for both participants. For the trust game, participants were less likely to place full trust in their anonymous partner. Overall, we provide novel evidence that following TSD, the conflict between personal financial gain and payoff equality is focused upon avoidance of unfavourable inequality (i.e. unfairness). This results in the rejection of unfair offers at personal monetary cost, and the lack of full trust which would expose one to being exploited in the interaction. As such, we suggest that within a social domain decisions may be more influenced by emotion following TSD, which has fundamental consequences for real-world decision-making involving social exchange.k e y w o r d s bargaining, interaction, sleep loss, social preference, trust

This paper reports the results of an experimental study which introduces an endogenous probability of public good provision into the voluntary contributions mechanism. Specifically, the two treatments allow for nonprovision even with positive contributions. In one treatment, the provision probability rises with increased contributions (while preserving the dominant strategy equilibrium of zero contributions). The results show that uncertainty per se lowers individual but not group contributions, lagged marginal incentives significantly predict contributions, and individuals significantly react to own-deviations from average group contributions. This has implications for work teams or professional sports teams who see increased probability of group rewards given higher effort levels.

Our study examines how chronic sleep restriction and suboptimal times-of-day affect decisions in a classic set of social tasks. We experimentally manipulate and objectively measured sleep in 184 young-adult subjects, who were also randomly assigned an early morning or late evening experiment session during which decision tasks were administered. Sleep restriction and suboptimal time-of-day are both estimated to either directly or indirectly (via an impact on sleepiness) reduce altruism, trust, and trustworthiness. We conclude that commonly experienced adverse sleep states, most notably chronic sleep restriction, significantly reduce prosocial behaviors, and can therefore limit benefits from short-term social interactions.

This paper reports on the use of carrot (positive) and stick (negative) incentives as methods of increasing effort among members of work teams. We study teams of four members in a laboratory environment in which giving effort towards the team goal is simulated by eliciting voluntary contributions towards the provision of a public good. We test the efficiencyimproving properties of four distinct environments: monetary prizes given to high contributors versus monetary fines assessed to low contributors, where high/low contributor is defined first in terms of absolute contributions and then in terms of contributions relative to abilities-which we call handicapping. Our results show that both carrot and stick can increase efficiency (i.e., contributions) levels by 10-28%. We find that handicapped incentives promise the highest efficiency levels, and when handicapping is not used penalties may be more effective than prizes. The implications for work teams and suggestions for practical implementation are discussed.