Affirmative action rules are often implemented to promote women on labor markets. Little is known, however, about how and whether such rules emerge endogenously in groups of potentially affected subjects. We experimentally investigate whether subjects vote for affirmative action rules, against,...

Many important intertemporal decisions, such as investments of firms or households, are made by groups rather than individuals. Little is known what happens to such collective decisions when group members have different incentives for waiting, because the economics literature on group decision...

This paper investigates whether distributional conflicts become more likely when groups are involved in the fight. We present results from a laboratory experiment in which two parties can appropriate resources via a contest or, alternatively, take an outside option. Keeping monetary gains...

This note uncovers new properties of the von Neumann-Morgenstern solution in weak tournaments and majoritarian games. We propose a new procedure for the construction of choice sets from weak tournaments, based on dynamic stability criteria. The idea is to analyze dynamic versions of the...

We experimentally investigate spillover effects of affirmative action policies in tournaments on subsequent team performance and the willingness to work in teams. In three different team environments, we find that such policies in form of gender quotas do not harm performance and cooperation...

We examine the effects of social preferences and beliefs about the social preferences of others in a simple leader-follower voluntary contributions game. We find that groups perform best when led by those who are reciprocally oriented. Part of the effect can be explained by a false consensus...

We report an experiment comparing sequential and simultaneous contributions to a public good in a quasi-linear two-person setting. In one parameterization we find that overall provision is lower under sequential than simultaneous contributions, as predicted, but the distribution of contributions...

We examine the characteristics of effective leaders in a simple leader-follower voluntary contributions game. We focus on two factors: the individual's cooperativeness and the individual's beliefs about the cooperativeness of others. We find that groups perform best when led by those who are...

We compare social preference and social norm based explanations for peer effects in a three-person gift-exchange game experiment. In the experiment a principal pays a wage to each of two agents, who then make effort choices sequentially. In our baseline treatment we observe that the second...

We study the interplay between leading-by-example and group identity in a public goods game experiment. A common identity between the leader and her followers is beneficial for cooperation: average contributions are more than 30% higher than in a treatment where no identity was induced. In two...