Both the law and culture make a central distinction between acts of commission that overturn the status quo and acts of omission that uphold it. In everyday life acts of commission often elicit stronger reciprocal responses than do acts of omission. In this paper we compare reciprocal responses...

The hold-up problem has played a central role in the study of firm boundaries, which is a fundamental element of the economic study of organizations. We study a previously unex-plored mechanism by which integration between two parties could resolve the problem. Based on the social identity...

The hold-up problem has played a central role in the study of firm boundaries that originated with the pathbreaking essay by Coase (1937). This paper studies a previously unexplored mechanism through which integration could resolve the hold-up problem. Based on Tajfel and Turner’s (1979)...

We contribute to the theory of the firm by experimentally investigating a bilateral trade relationship in which standard theory assuming self-regarding preferences predicts that the seller will be better off by investing in the outside option to improve his bargaining position. The seller’s...

We study whether group identity helps mitigate inefficiencies associated with appropriable quasi-rents, which are often created by relationship-specific investments in bilateral trade relationships. Based on previous findings that group identity strengthens other-regarding preferences, we...

Groups, companies, and organizations identify themselves via symbols. Symbols have the potential to create group identity and at the same time create group boundaries, thus allowing for achieving the benefits of cooperation by ingroup members. We use a laboratory experiment to study the role of...

In this paper we use laboratory experiments to test the theoretical predictions derived by Villegas-Palacio and Coria (2010) about the effects of the interaction between technology adoption and incomplete enforcement. They show that under Tradable Emissions Permits (TEPs), and in contrast to...

We compare of the performance of emission taxes between Colombia and Sweden in an experimental setting where subjects are regulated through environmental taxes and had to decide on emission levels, compliance behavior, and adoption of an environmentally friendly technology. Our design allows us...