Using a laboratory experiment, we examine whether informal monetary sanctions can lead to better coordination in a repeated minimum effort coordination game. While most groups first experience inefficient coordination, the efficiency increases substantially after introducing an ex post...

Recent research has cast some doubt on the general validity of outcome-based models of social preferences. We develop a model based on cognitive dissonance that focuses on the importance of self-image. An experiment (a dictator game variant) tests the model. First, we find that subjects whose...

We consider three-person envy games with a proposer, a responder, and a dummy player. In this class of games, the proposer, rather than allocating a constant pie, chooses the pie size which the responder can then accept or reject while the dummy player can only refuse his own share. While the...

We report on an experiment designed to explore whether and how anger affects future levels of cooperation. Participants play three consecutive one-shot games. In between two identical two-person public goods games there is a mini dictator game that, depending on the treatment, either gives or...

Envy is often the cause of mutually harmful outcomes. We experimentally study the impact of envy in a bargaining setting in which there is no conflict in material interests: a proposer, holding the role of residual claimant, chooses the size of the pie to be shared with a responder, whose share...

Actual behaviour is influenced in important ways by moral emotions, for instance guilt or shame (see among others Tangney et al., 2007). Belief-dependant models of social preferences using the framework of psychological games aim to consider such emotions to explain other-regarding behaviour....

Economic theory has evolved without paying proper attention to behavioral approaches, especially to social, economic, and cognitive psychology. This has recently changed by including behavioral economics courses in many doctoral study programs. Although this new development is most welcome, the...