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...

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...

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...

In the experimental scenario several agents repeatedly invest in n (n2) state-specific assets. The evolutionarily stable and equilibrium (Blume and Easley, 1992) portfolio for this situation requires to distribute funds according to the constant probabilities of the various states. The different...

A unique indivisible commodity with an unknown common value is owned by group of individuals and should be allocated to one of them while compensating the others monetarily. We study the so-called fair division game (Güth, Ivanova-Stenzel, Königstein, and Strobel (2002, 2005)) theoretically...

In experiments, people behave more cooperatively when they are aware of an external threat, while in the field, we observe surprisingly high levels of cooperation and altruism within groups in conflict situations such as civil wars. We provide an explanation for these phenomena. We introduce a...

We analyze the effect of investments in corporate social responsibility (CSR) on workers' motivation. In our experiment, a gift exchange game variant, CSR is captured by donating a certain share of profits to a charity. We are testing for CSR effects by varying the possible share of profits...

Our study analyzes theories of learning for strategic interactions in networks. Participants played two of the 2 x 2 games used by Selten and Chmura (2008) and in the comment by Brunner, Camerer and Goeree (2009). Every participant played against four neighbors and could choose a different...

We study experimentally whether heterogeneity of behavior in the Centipede game can be interpreted as the result of a learning process of individuals with different preference types (more and less pro-social) and coarse information regarding the opponent's past behavior. We manipulate the...