We study contracting between a consumer and an expert. The expert can invest in diagnosis to obtain a noisy signal about whether a low–cost service is sufficient or whether a high–cost treatment is required to solve the consumer’s problem. This involves moral hazard because...

The purpose of this paper is to explore strategic incentives to use trade networks rather than markets and shed light on the dynamic relation between the two distinct trading systems: a formal system of markets and a decentralised system of networks. We investigate the issues in the infinitely...

The purpose of this paper is to explore strategic incentives to use trade networks rather than markets and shed light on the dynamic relation between the two distinct trading systems: a formal system of markets and a decentralised system of networks. We investigate the issues in the infinitely...

This paper reports experimental tests of two alternative explanations of how players use focal points to select equilibria in one-shot coordination games. Cognitive hierarchy theory explains coordination as the result of common beliefs about players’ pre-reflective inclinations towards the...

We explore the scientific potential of virtual worlds for experimental economists. In particular, we report the results of a series of virtual world experiments designed to examine the suitability of (a) users as subjects and (b) the computer interface as an experimental platform. Formal results...

One lingering puzzle is why voluntary contributions to public goods decline over time in experimental and real-world settings. We show that the decline of cooperation is driven by individual preferences for imperfect conditional cooperation. Many people’s desire to contribute less than others,...

This paper provides sufficient and partially necessary conditions for the equivalence of Nash and evolutionary equilibrium in symmetric games played by finite populations. The focus is on symmetric equilibria in pure strategies. The conditions are based on properties of the payoff function that...

This paper extends the Baron-Ferejohn model of legislative bargaining to general weighted majority games with two modifications: first, payoff division can only be agreed upon after the coalition has formed (two-stage bargaining); second, negotiations in the coalition can break down, in which...

This paper makes three related contributions to noncooperative game theory: (i) a solution concept (the “ICEU solution”), which is generated by an iterative procedure that constructs trinary partitions of strategy sets and deals with problems arising from weak dominance; (ii) a class of models...

We report evidence from public goods experiments with and without punishment which we conducted in Russia with 566 urban and rural participants of young and mature age cohorts. Russia is interesting for studying voluntary cooperation because of its long history of collectivism, and a huge...