Evolutionary theory reveals that punishment is effective in promoting cooperation and maintaining social norms. Although it is accepted that emotions are connected to punishment decisions, there remains substantial debate over why humans use costly punishment. Here we show experimentally that...

Experimental results on the ultimatum game show clearly that (1) large fractions of players offer a 'fair' allocation and (2) that unfair (but positive) offers are systematically rejected. We offer an explanation of this behavior using the 'indirect evolutionary approach' which is based on the...

This paper reports the findings of a meta-analysis of 37 papers with 75 results from ultimatum game experiments. We find that on average the proposer offers 40% of the pie to the responder. This share tends is smaller for larger pie sizes and larger when a strategy method is used or when...

This is a commentary on Vernon Smith's contributions to experimental economics

This paper reports experimental evidence on behaviour in an Ultimatum Game where responders have low structural information and feedback so that they have to learn the nature of the game during repeated play. The results lend support to the view that certain learning conditions are less...

The widespread ennoblement of the Spanish bourgeoisie in the sixteenth century has been traditionally considered one of the main causes of Iberian decline. I document and quantify the surge in ennoblement through a new time series of nobility cases preserved in the Archive of the Royal Chancery...

This note is mainly based on a short interview with Thomas C. Schelling (TCS), who shared the Nobel Prize with Robert J. Aumann in 2005. The interview took place on 06.03.2001 at University of Maryland, College Park, USA. It consists of two parts. The first part is about his interpretation of...