Theoretically and experimentally, we generalize the analysis of acquiringa company (Samuelson and Bazerman 1985) by allowing for competition ofboth, buyers and sellers. Naivety of both is related to the idea that higherprices exclude worse qualities. While competition of naive buyers...

The results of an asset market experiment, in which 64 subjects trade two assets oneight markets in a computerized continuous double auction, indicate that objectivelyirrelevant information influences trading behavior. Moreover, positively and negativelyframed information leads to a particular...

Are commonly known beliefs essential for bidding behavior in asymmetric auctions? Our experimental results suggest that not informing participants how values are randomly generated does not change behavior much and may even make it appear more rational.

A unique indivisible commodity with an unknown common value is owned bygroup of individuals and should be allocated to one of them while compensating theothers monetarily. We study the so-called fair division game (Güth, Ivanova-Stenzel,Königstein, and Strobel (2002, 2005)) theoretically and...

Although one may hope to achieve equality of stated profits withoutenforcing it, one may not trust in such voluntary equality seeking andrather try to impose rules (of bidding) guaranteeing it.[...]

Dynamics of compliance, depending on audit probability, sanctions, and the time lagbetween audits, are investigated in a tax experiment. Compliance varied significantlyover time: it decreased immediately after an audit and increased afterwards, especially if audits were frequent and sanctions high.

Similar to Levati and Neugebauer (2001), a clock is used by which participantscan vary their individual contributions for voluntarily providing apublic good. As time goes by, participants either in(de)crease their contributiongradually or keep it constant. Groups of two poorly and two...

We conducted a laboratory study with a public goods game in which contributions are notsubmitted all at once but incrementally as coordinated in real time by a clock. Individualspress a button as soon as the clock equals their willingness to contribute. This publicgoods institution exploits the...

One-shot interaction and repeated interaction often co-exist in the real world. We study possible behavioral effects of this co-existence in a principal-agent setting, in which a principal simultaneously employs a permanent and a temporary agent. Our experimental results indicate that there is...

We experimentally test whether intentional and observable discriminatorypay of symmetric agents in the Winter (2004) game causes lowpaid agents to reduce effort. We control for intentionality of wages byeither allowing a principal to determine wages or by implementing arandom process. Our main...