In many economic contexts, an elusive variable of interest is the agent's belief about relevant events, e.g. about other agents' behavior. A growing number of surveys and experiments ask participants to state beliefs explicitly but little is known about the causal relation between beliefs and...

In a laboratory experiment designed to capture key aspects of the interaction be-tween physicians and patients in a stylized way, we study the effects of medical insurance and competition in the guise of free choice of physician. Medical treat-ment is an example of a credence good: only the...

We explore the stability of imitation in a 1,200-period experimental Cournot game where subjects do not know the payoff function but see the output quantities and payoffs of each oligopolist after every period. In line with theoretical predictions and previous experimental findings, our...

In this note we shall discuss a concept that - despite its prominence in both Hume (1739) and Smith (1759), its obvious relevance for social behavior, and its not so infrequent use in colloquial language - has never gained a foothold in economic theory: the concept of empathy. Specifically, we...