This Paper presents a formal theory of reciprocity. Reciprocity means that people reward kind actions and punish unkind ones. The theory takes into account that people evaluate the kindness of an action not only by its consequences but also by the intention underlying this action. The theory...

This Paper shows that identical offers in an ultimatum game generate systematically different rejection rates depending on the other offers that are available to the proposer. This result casts doubt on the consequentialist practice in economics of defining the utility of an action solely in...

In this Paper we show that a simple model of fairness preferences explains major experimental regularities of common pool resource (CPR) experiments. The evidence indicates that in standard CPR games without communication and without sanctioning possibilities inefficient excess appropriation is...

Recent evidence highlights the importance of social norms in many economic relations. Many of these relationships are long-term and provide repeated game incentives for performance. We experimentally investigate interaction effects of reciprocity and repeated game incentives in two treatments...

Typically, laboratory experiments suffer from homogeneous subject pools and self-selection biases. The usefulness of survey data is limited by measurement error and by the questionability of their behavioural relevance. Here we present a method integrating interactive experiments and...

This paper discusses recent neuroeconomic evidence related to other-regarding behaviours and the decision to trust in other people’s other-regarding behaviour. This evidence supports the view that people derive non-pecuniary utility (i) from mutual cooperation in social dilemma (SD) games and...

In this Paper we provide experimental evidence indicating that incentive contracts may cause a strong crowding out of voluntary cooperation. This crowding-out effect constitutes costs of incentive provision that have been largely neglected by economists. In our experiments the crowding-out...

During the last two decades economists have made much progress in understanding incentives, contracts and organizations. Yet, they constrained their attention to a very narrow and empirically questionable view of human motivation. The purpose of this Paper is to show that this narrow view of...

A growing economic literature stresses the importance of relative comparisons, e.g., for savings and consumption or happiness. In this literature it is usually assumed that reference standards against which people compare themselves are exogenously given. In contrast, findings from social...

In this Paper, we suggest a novel approach to programme evaluation that allows identification of the causal effect of a training programme on the likelihood of being invited to a job interview under weak assumptions. The idea is to measure the programme-effects by pre- and post-treatment data...