This paper experimentally investigates a well-known anomaly in portfolio management, i.e. the fact that paper losses are realized less than paper gains (disposition effect). The existence of the disposition effect is documented in a simple risk task which demonstrates that the anomaly is most...

This paper presents the results of an experiment on mutual versus common knowl- edge of advice in a two-player weak-link game with random matching. Our experimen- tal subjects play in pairs for thirteen rounds. After a brief learning phase common to all treatments, we vary the knowledge levels...

We investigate strategic choices of individuals working for social cooperatives in Italy. Specifically, a 2-players Prisoner’s Dilemma is administered as an attachment to a nationwide survey of nonprofit organizations. We experimentally manipulate social proximity of the participants and...

Macroeconomic models are typically solved through the imposition of a top-down general equilibrium solution constraining agents' rational be- havior. This is customarily obtained by recurring, explicitly or not, to the Walrasian auctioneer (WA) artifice. In this paper we aim at contributing to...

Group membership increases cooperation in social dilemma games, altruistic donation in dictator games, and fair offers in ultimatum games. While the empirical study of group action has grown rapidly over the years, there is little agreement at the theoretical level on exactly why and how group...

We analyze subjects’ eye movements while they make decisions in a series of one-shot games. The majority of them perform a partial and selective analysis of the payoff matrix, often ignoring the payoffs of the opponent and/or paying attention only to specific cells. Our results suggest that...

Nudge policies are typically justified from paternalistic premises: nudges are acceptable if they benefit the individuals who are nudged. A tacit assumption behind this strategy is that the biases of decision that choice architects attempt to eliminate generate costs that are paid mainly by the...

This paper extends choice theory by allowing for the interaction between cognitive costs and social norms. We experimentally investigate the role of imitation when participants face a task which is costly in cognitive terms. We identify two main reasons for imitative behavior. First, individuals...

We present an axiomatic model of choice involving two agents, motivated by the experimental evidence on non-selfish preferences. We distinguish two classes of social preferences, depending on whether they are or not separable. Altruism and spite (Andreoni & Miller, 2002; Cox et al., 2007) are...