Individual behaviors such as smoking, fashion, and the adoption of new products is influenced by taking account of others' actions in one's decisions.  We study social influence in a heterogeneous population and analyze the long-run behavior of the dynamics.  We distinguish between cases in...

Teams are becoming increasingly important in work settings.  We develop a framework to study the strategic implications of a meritocratic notion of desert under which team members care about receiving what they feel they deserve.  Team members find it painful to receive less than their...

We develop a model to describe the behavior of agents who care about receiving their just deserts in competitive situations. In particular we analyze the strategic behaviour of two identical desert-motivated agents in a rank-order tournament. Each agent is assumed to be loss averse about an...

This paper examines the relationship between norm enforcement and in-group favouritism behaviour.  Using a new two-stage allocation experiment with punishments, we investigate whether in-group favouritism is considered as a social norm in itself or as a violation of a different norm, such as...

We study in-group favouritism and out-group discrimination in a multiplayer dictator game.  An allocator divides a large sum of money among three groups of 20 recipients each and Self.  Allocations to groups are divided equally among the group members.  The three groups are supporters of the...

Using a laboratory experiment with minimal groups, we examined the extent to which the threats of costly punishments affect in-group favouritism behaviour. We studied three types of punishment separately: in-group, out-group, and third-party punishments. In line with previous studies, the...

Can we devise mechanisms that allow voters to express the intensity of their preferences when monetary transfers are forbidden? Would we then be able to take account of how much voters wish the approval or dismissal of any particular issue? In such cases, would some minorities be able to decide...

Jackson and Sonnenschein (2006) show that by linking collective decisions the incentive costs can become negligible and, at the limit, ex-ante efficiency can be achieved. In a voting situation this implies that the agents` intensity of preferences can be taken into account even in the absence of...

Many interactive environments can be represented as games, but they are so large and complex that individual players are in the dark about others' actions and the payoff structure.  This paper analyzes learning behavior in such 'black box' environments, where players' only source of information...

It is commonly asserted that such problems as inner-city traffic congestion and pollution can be understood as examples of the Prisoner`s Dilemma Game (PD), but there is a dearth of empirical research that tests this assertion. 587 car owners in Oxford City were presented with three pairs of...