We use a two-person linear voluntary contribution mechanism with stochastic marginal benefits from the public good to examine the effect of imperfect information on contributions levels. To assess prior risk attitudes, individual valuations of several risky prospects are elicited via a...

Theory absorption, a notion introduced by Morgenstern and Schwödiauer (1972)and further elaborated by Güth and Kliemt (2004), discusses the problem whether atheory can survive its own acceptance. Whereas this holds for strategic equilibria accordingto the assumptions on which they are based,...

When do we cooperate and why? This question concerns one of the most persistent divides between \"theory and practice\", between predictions from game theory and results from experimental studies. For about 15 years, theoretical analyses predict completely-mixed \"behavior\" strategies, i.e....

Overbidding in auctions has been attributed to e.g. risk aversion, loser regret, level-k, and cursedness, relying on varying identifying assumptions. I argue that \"type projection\'\" organizes these findings and largely captures observed behavior. Type projection formally models that people...

Why do people give when asked, but prefer not to be asked, and even take when possible? We show that standard behavioral axioms including separability, narrow bracketing, and scaling invariance predict these seemingly inconsistent observations. Specifically, these axioms imply that...

When voting takes place in democratic institutions, we find (either explicitly or implicitly) that there is an agenda setter or a formateur. Such players are uniquely able to make substantive proposals for given topics. Their statuses remain intact even after rejection of proposals, but they...