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...

Fairness is a strong concern as shown by the robust results of dictator giving and ultimatum experiments. Efficiency, measured by the sum of individual payoffs, is another potential concern in games such as the prisoners' dilemma and public good provision games. In our experiment participants...

Applying an indirect evolutionary approach with endogenous preference formation, we show that a legal system can induce players to reward trust even if material incentives dictate to exploit trust. By analyzing the crowding out or crowding in of trustworthiness implied by various verdict rules,...