A relevance, distinctiveness and plausibility (RDP) analysis is a conceptual framework that can be used to identify when potential confounds are a problem for interpreting experimental results. We illustrate this analysis using the creation or enhancement of natural group identity by the means...

We introduce the experimental vendetta game. Two groups of four players each interact over ten identical rounds. In each round each player decides whether or not to reduce the payoff of each member of the other group, at an own cost. Reducing payoffs entails no material benefit for either the...

We analyze lottery-choice data in a way that separately estimates the effects of risk aversion and complexity aversion, and allows both both of these to vary between individuals, and also to change with experience. The data is from an experiment in which 80 subjects engage in a sequence of 54...

We study antisocial preferences in simple money-burning tasks. A decision maker can choose whether or not to reduce another person's payoff at an own cost. We vary across tasks the initial endowment of the decider and the victim. We find that most conventional expectations are refuted: Subjects...

The underlying motivations for envy or related social preferences and their impact on agricultural innovations are examined by combining data from money burning experimental game and household survey from Ethiopia. In the first stage of the money burning experimental game, income inequality is...

Is the rapid growth of experimental research in economics evidence of a new scientific spirit at work or merely fresh evidence of a misplaced desire to ape the methods of natural sciences? It is often argued that economic experiments are artificial in some sense which tends to render the results...

Recent papers hypothesize that an asymmetry in regret motivates aggressive bidding in laboratory first-price auctions. Subjects emphasize potential earnings foregone from being outbid. Proposed motivators of this asymmetry include the one-to-one relationship in the auction between winning and...

We explore network effects on generosity for different network dimensions. To this end we elicit multiple network dimensions (friendship, social support, economic exchange, etc.) in a rural village in the Southern hemisphere and measure generosity with a sequence of dictator games conducted in...

Game theory predicts that players make strategic commitments that may appear counter-intuitive. We conducted an experiment to see if people make a counter-intuitive but strategically optimal decision to avoid information. The experiment is based on a sequential Nash demand game in which a...