Standard economic explanations of good conduct in trade rely almost exclusively on future-directed extrinsic motivations induced by material incentives. But intrinsic motives to behave trustworthily and to punish untrustworthiness do support trade. In our model, intrinsically motivated players...

Standard economic explanations of good conduct in trade rely almost exclusively on future-directed extrinsic motivations induced by material incentives. But intrinsic motives to behave trustworthy and to punish untrustworthiness do support trade. In our model, intrinsically motivated players are...

Economic theory has evolved without paying proper attention to behavioral approaches, especially to social, economic, and cognitive psychology. This has recently changed by including behavioral economics courses in many doctoral study programs. Although this new development is most welcome, the...

Though the social choice of social institutions or social results is impossible - there is, strictly speaking, no social choice - individual evaluations of social institutions or results trivially are possible. Such individual evaluations can be deemed liberal either because they emphasize...

Banning deception in economic experiments does not exclude experiments with participants in the role of experimenters who can gain by deceiving those in the role of participants. We compare treatments with and without possible deception by experimenter-participants to test whether deception...

Like avoiding labor protection laws via foreign subcontractors, banning deception in economic experiments does not exclude experiments with participants in the role of experimenters who, similar to properly incentivized subcontractors, can gain by deceiving those in the role of proper...

Even if contract enforcers are as opportunistic as ordinary traders, a system of adjudication can increase the degree to which contractual obligations on large anonymous markets are fulfilled. Only if arbitrators receive a fixed income, occasional mistakes will not favour the untrustworthy. It...

In standard rational choice modelling decisions are made according to given information and preferences. In the model presented here the 'information technology' of individual decision makers as well as their preferences evolve in a dynamic process. In this process decisions are made rationally...

Can a court system conceivably control opportunistic behavior if judges are selected from the same population as ordinary citizens and thus are no better than the rest of us? This paper provides a new and, as we claim, quite profound rational choice answer to that unsolved riddle. Adopting an...