Retributive responses do play a role in human behavior. Whether they are primarily triggered by supposed intentions or by observed consequences of actions is an important question. It can be addressed by experimental studies of retributive responses in situations in which the individual actor...

We report on a research program that employs the indirect evolutionary approach to analyze how the institutional environment drives the evolution of trust and trustworthiness through the evolution of moral preferences, and how in turn the evolution of preferences shapes the evolution of the...

In this paper we consider conventions as regularities in behavior which help to solve coordination problems in a society. These problems can be formalized as non-cooperative games with several equilibria. We know that in such situations serious problems of equilibrium selection arise which...

Das Anspruchserfüllungskonzept mit seinen Bausteinen „Anspruchsbildung, Anspruchserfüllung und Anspruchsanpassung“ ist die zentrale Idee in der Theorie des eingeschränkt rationalen Entscheidens. Ähnlich wie die Rationalwahltheorie, die ohne kühne Einschränkungen, zum Beispiel der...

To commit credibly in bargaining is crucial: In the ultimatum game with its one-sided early commitment power the “proposer” gets (nearly) the whole pie while the “responder” is left with (almost) nothing. When both parties commit simultaneously the (a)symmetric Nash(1950)-bargaining...

A procurement contract is granted by a bureaucrat (the auctioneer) who is interested in a low price and a bribe from the provider. The optimal bids and bribes are derived based on an iid private cost assumption. In the experiment, bribes are negatively framed (betweensubjects treatment) to...

Whether incentive contracts perform better than trust in terms of productive efficiency is usually explored by principal-agent experiments (most involving only one agent). We investigate this issue in the context of a three-person ultimatum experiment, which is simpler and more neutrally framed...

We experimentally examine how group identity affects trust behavior in an investment game. In one treatment, group identity is induced purely by minimal groups. In other treatments, group members are additionally related by outcome interdependence established in a prior public goods game. Moving...

Bereits im Jahre 1980 wählte Horst Albach einen spieltheoretischen und experimentellökonomischen Zugang zum Vertrauensproblem in der Ökonomik. Dieser Weg wird erneut beschritten. Es wird aufgezeigt, dass neuere spieltheoretische und experimentelle Arbeiten nicht nur die explanativen Grenzen...

We examine the strategic behavior of leaders and followers in sequential duopoly experiments in which followers either perfectly observe the leaders’ actions or else observe nothing. Our experiments show that consistent with the theory, leaders enjoy a greater …rst-mover advantage when...