Almost all international environmental agreements include a minimum participation rule. Under such a rule an agreement becomes legally binding if and only if a certain threshold in terms of membership or contribution is reached. We analyze a cartel game with open membership and heterogeneous...

We experimentally test the social motives behind individual participation in intergroup conflict by manipulating the framing and symmetry of conflict. We find that behavior in conflict depends on whether one is harmed by actions perpetrated by the out-group, but not on one’s own influence on...

This paper surveys the recent literature on the political economy of the formation of international environmental agreements. The survey covers theoretical modelling approaches and empirical studies including experimental work. Central to our survey is the question how the political process...

During the last three decades the ascent of behavioral economics clearly helped to bring down artificial disciplinary boundaries between psychology and economics. Noting that behavioral economics seems still under the spell of the rational choice tradition and, indirectly, of behaviorism we...

Often in cooperative situations, many aspects of the decision-making environment are uncertain. We investigate how cooperation is shaped by the way information about risk is presented (from description or from experience) and by differences in risky environments. Drawing on research from risky...

We propose a meta-heuristic approach for solving nonlinear dynamic tracking games. In contrast to more "traditional" methods based on linear-quadratic (LQ) techniques, this derivative-free method is very flexible (e.g. to introduce inequality constraints). The meta-heuristic is applied to a...

For games of simultaneous action selection and network formation, game-theoretic behavior and experimental observations are not in line: While theory typically predicts inefficient outcomes for (anti-)coordination games, experiments show that subjects tend to play efficient (non Nash) strategy...

Talent allocation models assume that entrepreneurial talent is selfish and thus allocates into unproductive or even destructive activities if these offer the highest private returns. This paper experimentally analyzes other-regarding preferences of entrepreneurial talent. We find that making a...

Understanding how observers attribute intentionality to people in the focus of their attention helps in shedding light on punishment behavior. In this paper we approach impartial observers' attributions of intentionality and the attachment of praise and blame to perpetrators of external effects....

Unanimous voting as the fundamental procedural source of political legitimacy grants veto power to each individual. We present an axiomatic characterization of a class of bidding processes to spell out the underlying egalitarian values for collective projects of a "productive state". At heart of...