We conducted a laboratory study with a public goods game in which contributions are not submitted all at once but incrementally as coordinated in real time by a clock. Individuals press a button as soon as the clock equals their willingness to contribute. This public goods institution exploits...

We present an experimental study on the wasted resources associated with tax evasion. This waste arises from taxpayers and tax authorities, investing costly effort in concealment, respectively detect ion, of tax evasion. We show that (socially inefficient) efforts depend positively on the...

Social norms involve observation by others and external sanctions for violations,while moral norms involve introspection and internal sanctions. We develop a simple model ofindividual preferences that incorporates moral and social norms. We then examine dictatorchoices, where we create a shared...

We document a lower bound for thecontrol premium: agents' willingness to pay to control their own payoff. Participants choose between an asset that will pay only if they later answer a particular quiz question correctly and one that pays only if their partner answers a different question...

We tested the effects of various of policy rules on retailer behavior in laboratory experiments conducted at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. Our experimental design models the multifaceted contemporary market for consumer computer products and is quite complex, but we found that participants can...

Traffic congestion is a substantial time cost for many urban commuters. This paper studies the response of subjects in an experimental setting in which subjects choose between a short direct route that becomes increasingly congested as more people travel on it and a more indirect route that does...

This paper investigates whether information about generosity or fairness can be useful in lowering dispute costs and enhancing bargaining efficiency. Subjects were first screened using a dictator game, with the allocations chosen used to separate participants into two types. Mutually anonymous...

The effectiveness of pre-play communication in achieving efficient outcomes has long been a subject of controversy. In some environments, cheap talk may help to achieve coordination. However, Aumann conjectures that, in a variant of the Stag Hunt game, a signal for efficient play is not...