The trust building process is basic to social science. We investigate it in a laboratory setting using a novel multi-stage trust game where social gains are achieved if players trust each other in each stage. And in each stage, players have an opportunity to appropriate these gains or be...

The use of linear wholesale price contract has long been recognized as a threat to achieving channel effciency. Many formats of nonlinear pricing contract have been proposed to achieve vertical channel coordination. Examples include two-part tariff and quantity discount. A two-part tariff...

The paper aims at: presenting the origins and the recent developments of Experimental Economics; describing the first experiments and the discussions they raised; proposing a picture of the current state of the art in the discipline, also from a methodological point of view, individuating a new...

This paper aims to illustrate the results of an experimental analysis in which - along with organizational coordination - the participants' level of satisfaction was measured. As in the analysis of individual happiness, satisfaction is here measured by explicitly asking players. A series of...

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

We develop a model of information processing and strategy choice for participants in a double auction. Sellers in this model form beliefs that an offer will be accepted by some buyer. Similarly, buyers form beliefs that a bid will be accepted. These beliefs are formed on the basis of observed...

We examine how social preferences affect behavior and surplus in relational contracts. Experimental subjects participate in a contracting environment similar to Brown, Falk, and Fehr [Brown, M., Falk, A. & Fehr, E., “Relational Contracts and the Nature of Market Interactions, Econometrica, 72...

Reinforcement learning has proved quite successful in predicting subjects' adjustment behaviour in repeatedly played simple games. However, reinforcement learning does not predict convergence to the efficient cell in the minimal information game of mutual fate control, while earlier...

Recently, it has been argued that the evidence in social science research suggests that deceiving subjects in an experiment does not lead to a significant loss of experimental control. Based on this assessment, experimental economists were counseled to lift their de facto prohibition against...

This paper aims at analysing the effects of learning on the individual behaviour in an experiment that requires cooperation and coordination within teams. Using artificial agents, different social contests are created, as training environments. The results confirm previous findings (on the...