The paper investigates the introduction of an institution, in form of an impartial authority (third party), into a two-person situation. The impartial authority can reward a stranger for acting according to a desired behavioral norm. The reward is costly for the authority and her behavior cannot...

When agents face coordination problems their choices often impose externalities on third parties. We investigate whether such externalities can affect equilibrium selection in a series of one-shot coordination games varying the size and the sign of the externality. We fi?nd that third-party...

On the basis of problems related to asymmetric information, self-governance has been proposed and often empirically found to be superior to the external imposition of rules in social dilemma situations. The present paper suggests and experimentally analyses a different line of argument, namely...

We study how cooperative behavior reacts to selective (favorable or unfavorable) pre-play information about the cooperativeness of other, unrelated groups within an experimental framework that is sufficiently rich for conflicting behavioral norms to emerge. We find that cooperation crucially...

According to Adam Smith (1790), human selfishness can be restrained by introspection. We test the effect of introspection on people’s willingness to cooperate in a public good game. Drawing on the concept of identity utility (George A. Akerlof and Rachel E. Kranton, 2000), we show...

In a laboratory experiment, I test whether guilt aversion, i.e., a preference to fulfill other people’s expectations, plays out stronger if agents are socially close. I induce two different group identities among participants. They play a dictator game. Dictators either play with a recipient...

Customary law has been criticized from very different angles. Rational choice theorists claim that what looks like custom is nothing but self-interest. Positivists doubt that anything beyond consent assumes the force of law. In this paper, we adopt an experimental approach to test these claims....

Bracketing is a mental procedure about how people deal with multiple tasks. If a decision maker handles all the tasks at the same time, it is called broad bracketing. If she handles the tasks separately, e.g., one or a few tasks each time, it is called narrow bracketing. This paper...

Self-control theory is one of the best studied criminological paradigms. Since Gottfredson and Hirschi published their General Theory in 1990 the theory has been tested on more than a million subjects. This meta-study systematizes the evidence, reporting 717 results from 102 different...

Legal realists expect prosecutors to be selfish. If they get the defendant convicted, this helps them advance their careers. If the odds of winning on the main charge are low, prosecutors have a second option. They can exploit the ambiguity of legal doctrine and charge the defendant for vaguely...