Evidence from studies in international relations, the politics of reform, collective action and price competition suggests that economic agents in social dilemma situations cooperate more to avoid losses than in the pursuit of gains. To test whether the prospect of losses can induce cooperation,...

An observed discrepancy in the behaviour of Economics students and non-Economics ones in game theoretical experiments indicates that the former are more selfish. The prevalent explanation for this is that they are 'born economists' and thus self-select themselves into the discipline. This belief...

Punishment has been shown to be an effective reinforcement mechanism. Intentional or not, punishment will likely generate spillover effects that extend beyond one’s immediate decision environment, and these spillovers are not as well understood. We seek to understand these secondary spillover...

We use a novel experimental design to identify subjects’ strategies in an infinitely repeated prisoners’ dilemma experiment. We ask subjects to design strategies that will play in their place. We find no clear evidence that eliciting strategies affected subjects’ behavior, supporting the...

At an extreme, partners in coalition governments can divide tasks and individually decide policy in their ministerial jurisdictions. At the other extreme, parties sharing o ce can compromise and collectively set policy in each dimension regardless of portfolio allocation. This paper provides a...

Social dilemmas are central to human society. Depletion of natural resources, climate protection, security of energy supply, and workplace collaborations are all examples of social dilemmas. Since cooperative behaviour in a social dilemma is individually costly, Nash equilibrium predicts that...

The gift-exchange game is a form of sequential prisoner's dilemma, developed by Fehr, Kirchsteiger, and Riedl (1993), and popularized in a series of papers by Ernst Fehr and co-authors. While the European studies typically feature a high degree of gift exchange, the few U.S. studies provide some...

In one-shot social dilemma experiments, cooperation rates dramatically increase if subjects are allowed to communicate before making a choice. There are two possible explanations for this "communication effect". One is that communication enhances group identity, the other is that communication...

Cooperation in prisoner's dilemma games can usually be sustained only if the game has an infinite horizon. We analyze to what extent the theoretically crucial distinction of finite vs. infinite-horizon games is reflected in the outcomes of a prisoner's dilemma experiment. We compare three...