We conduct a laboratory experiment to analyze the effect transactions costs and inertia have on charitable giving. We conjecture that transaction costs will have a greater effect on donations if the solicitation is received when the opportunity cost of time is high. Inertia could become a factor...

In the vast majority of experiments documenting the existence of reciprocity subjects are endowed with windfall funds. In some situations such endowments might create a so-called “house money effect”. We identify two reasons why the source of endowment might matter for negative reciprocity:...

Both the law and culture make a central distinction between acts of commission that overturn the status quo and acts of omission that uphold it. In everyday life acts of commission often elicit stronger reciprocal responses than do acts of omission. In this paper we compare reciprocal responses...

Previous research has suggested that communication and especially promises in-crease cooperation in laboratory experiments. This has been taken as evidence for internal motivations such as guilt aversion or preference for promise keeping. The goals of this paper are to examine messages under a...

The hold-up problem has played a central role in the study of firm boundaries, which is a fundamental element of the economic study of organizations. We study a previously unex-plored mechanism by which integration between two parties could resolve the problem. Based on the social identity...

This paper tests Psychological Forward Induction in the Lost Wallet Game, in an attempt to explain an empirical puzzle observed by Dufwenberg & Gneezy (2000) that the size of the outside option forgone by the first mover does not affect the behavior of the second mover. This is puzzling as...

Will generous return policies in auctions benefit bidders? We investigate this issue using second-price common-value auctions. Theoretically, we find that the bidding equilibrium is unique unless returns are free, in which case there exist multiple equilibria with different implications for...

In this study, we examine the effectiveness of the individual-punishment mechanism in larger groups, comparing groups of four to groups of 40 participants. We find that the individual punishment mechanism is remarkably robust when the MPCR is held constant despite the coordination problems...

We examine the influence of social distance on levels of trust and reciprocity in China. Social distance, reflected in the indigenous concept of guanxi, is of central importance to Chinese culture. In Study 1, some participants participated in two financially salient trust games to measure...

We develop and test experimentally the argument that gender/family and/or professional identities, activated through psychological priming, may influence preference for competition. We focus on female professionals for whom these identities may conflict and male professionals for whom they may...