Economists and psychologists follow different approaches to measure individual competitiveness. While psychologists typically use self-reported psychometric scales, economists tend to use incentivized behavioral experiments, where subjects confronted with a specific task self-select into a competitive versus a piece-rate payment scheme. So far, both measurement approaches have remained largely isolated from one another. We discuss how these approaches are linked and based on a classroom experiment with 186 students we empirically examine the relationship between a behavioral competitiveness measure and a self-reported competitiveness scale. We find a stable positive relationship between these measures suggesting that both measures are indicators of the same underlying latent variable, which might be interpreted as a general preference to enter competitive situations. Moreover, our results suggest that the self-reported scale partly rests on motives related to personal development, whereas the behavioral measure does not reflect competitiveness motivated by personal development. Our study demonstrates how comparative studies such as ours can open up new avenues for the further development of both behavioral experiments and psychometric scales that aim at measuring individual competitiveness.

Referring to Isreal M. Kirzner (1973) and Schumpeter (1934), who emphasized the competitive nature of entrepreneurship, this study investigates whether potential and revealed entrepreneurs are more likely to seek competition than non-entrepreneurs. We provide a conceptual framework that links entrepreneurship to three facets of individual competitiveness drawn from economic, entrepreneurship, and psychological research: a desire to win, striving for personal development, and an enjoyment of competition. Following economic research linking competitive behavior in experiments to career choices, we conduct a lab-in-the-field study and demonstrate that entrepreneurs are more likely to enter competitions than non-entrepreneurs. Accounting for individual desires to win and masteryrelated achievement motivations, our results indicate that entrepreneurs tend to enter competition for the sake of competition itself rather than for the prospect of winning it or personal development. Our results suggest that enjoyment of competition might be an additional factor driving entrepreneurs' market entry decisions beyond well-known factors like overconfidence and risk-taking.

Prior research suggests that trust plays an important role in an individual's decision to participate in financial markets. This paper focuses on potential customers in retail banking markets and empirically investigates their trust in foreign banks and domestic banks. We argue that differences in customer trust can be related to three factors, namely bank-specific characteristics, individual characteristics of the potential customer and characteristics of the institutional environment. Using a large survey on the savings patterns of Indian households, we find that potential retail banking customers in India are less likely to trust foreign banks with their money than private Indian banks. However, our results also suggest that highly educated Indians using information sources such as the Internet, radio or newspaper, tend to have more confidence in foreign banks than in private Indian banks. Moreover, in regions with either more foreign bank branches or higher corruption levels the likelihood of consumers trusting Indian private banks more than foreign banks is lower than in other regions.

Referring to Isreal M. Kirzner (1973) and Schumpeter (1934), who emphasized the competitive nature of entrepreneurship, this study investigates whether potential and revealed entrepreneurs are more likely to seek competition than non-entrepreneurs. We provide a conceptual framework that links entrepreneurship to three facets of individual competitiveness drawn from economic, entrepreneurship, and psychological research: a desire to win, striving for personal development, and an enjoyment of competition. Following economic research linking competitive behavior in experiments to career choices, we conduct a lab-in-the-field study and demonstrate that entrepreneurs are more likely to enter competitions than non-entrepreneurs. Accounting for individual desires to win and masteryrelated achievement motivations, our results indicate that entrepreneurs tend to enter competition for the sake of competition itself rather than for the prospect of winning it or personal development. Our results suggest that enjoyment of competition might be an additional factor driving entrepreneurs' market entry decisions beyond well-known factors like overconfidence and risk-taking.Keywords Enjoyment of competition . Individual competitiveness . Entrepreneurship . Behavioral economics . Lab-in-the-field experiment JEL L26 . C9 . D9 I am asserting that entrepreneurship and competition are two sides of the same coin: that entrepreneurial activity is always competitive and that competitive activity is always entrepreneurial (Kirzner 1973, p. 94)

Both the Groves scheme and profit-sharing can lead to truthful reports produced by the better informed divisional manager for the benefit of the less well informed headquarters in charge of intra-firm resource allocation. However, both schemes have certain shortcomings: while the Groves scheme is susceptible to collusion among divisional managers, profit-sharing does not strictly ensure that truthful reporting is the dominant strategy in the case of each divisional manager. Both shortcomings can be remedied by combining the Groves scheme with an additional penalty scheme related to the Weitzman scheme. Using a game-theoretic approach, this paper introduces a new success indicator that establishes truthful reporting as the dominant strategy and prevents collusion or contractual agreements among divisional managers. In sum, this paper's theoretical results predict that applying the new success indicator leads to a higher level of truthful reporting, and therefore to more efficient resource allocation, than applying either the Groves scheme or profit-sharing alone.