We explore experimentally how power asymmetries between partners affect relationship-specific investments. We find that on average players' investments are larger than equilibrium investments. In contrast to social dilemma experiments, in our experiment preferences for social welfare and those...

In-group favoritism in social dilemma situations is one of the main findings of studies in Social Identity Theory. We investigate what causes the in-group bias: is it due to mere group affiliation or, alternatively, is guilt-aversion a possible explanation? We induce group membership in a...

The literature on social preferences provides overwhelming evidence of departures from pure self-interest of individuals. Experiments show that people care about others' well-being and their relative standing. This paper investigates whether this type of behavior persists when risk comes into...

We analyse pricing, effort and tipping decisions in the online service Google Answers. While users set a price for the answer to their question ex ante, they can additionally give a tip to the researcher ex post. In line with the related experimental literature we find evidence that tipping is...

We study ultimatum and dictator experiments where the first mover chooses the amount of money to be distributed between the players within a given interval, knowing that her own share is fixed. Thus, the first mover is faced with scarcity, but not with the typical trade-off between her own and...

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....

In three party ultimatum games the proposer can first decide whether to exclude one responder, what increases the available pie. The experiments control for intentionality of exclusion and veto power of the third party. We do not find evidence for indirect reciprocity of the remaining responder...

We investigate to what extent genuine social preferences can explain observed other-regarding behavior. In a dictator game variant subjects can choose whether to learn about the consequences of their choice for the receiver. We find that a majority of subjects showing other-regarding behavior...

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...

Intentions-based models of social preferences use the framework of psychological games and incorporate higher order beliefs and actions into the utility function. We test the robustness of two types of intentions-based models (guilt aversion and reciprocity). In addition to incentivised...