Industrial organization is mainly concerned with the behavior of large firms, especially when it comes to oligopoly theory. Experimental industrial organization, therefore, faces a problem: How can firms be brought into the laboratory? The main approach relies on framing: Call individuals...

This paper presents a laboratory experiment to measure the effect of group membership on individual behavior in modified dictator games. The results suggest that this effect is influenced by the degree of group membership saliency. A within-subject design is employed: in stage 1, each subject...

This paper reviews some of the economic experimental evidence on conformism. There is nothing to match the early psychology experiments where subjects were often swayed by the behaviour of others to an extraordinary degree, but there is plenty of evidence of conformism. This seems built-in to...

This paper analyzes responsibility attributions for outcomes of collective decision making processes. In particular, we ask if decision makers are blamed for being pivotal if they implement an unpopular outcome in a sequential voting process. We conduct an experimental voting game in which...

In this chapter, we discuss the “lab-in-the-field” methodology, which combines elements of both lab and field experiments in using standardized, validated paradigms from the lab in targeting relevant populations in naturalistic settings. We begin by examining how the methodology has been...

This chapter surveys literature on experimental law and economics. Long the domain of legally minded psychologists and criminologists, experimental methods are gaining significant popularity among economists interested in exploring positive and normative aspects of law. Because this literature...

This chapter surveys the rapidly growing literature in which risk preferences are measured and manipulated in laboratory and field experiments. The most commonly used measurement instruments are: an investment task for allocations between a safe and risky asset, a choice menu task for eliciting...

We develop a competitive equilibrium theory of a market for votes. Before voting on a binary issue, individuals may buy and sell their votes with each other. We define the concept of ex ante vote-trading equilibrium, and show by construction that an equilibrium exists. The equilibriumwe...

We study the stability of voluntary cooperation in response to varying group growth rates. Using a laboratory public-good game, we construct a situation where increasing group size yields potential efficiency gains, but only with sustained cooperation. We then study the effect of exogenously...

Prior research demonstrates a willingness to incur costs to punish norm violators. But, how strong are the motives underlying such acts? Will people rely on "excuses" to avoid acting on costly punishment intentions, as with other costly pro-social acts? In a laboratory experiment, we find that...