Traditional finance is built on the rationality paradigm. This chapter discusses simple models from an alternative approach in which financial markets are viewed as complex evolutionary systems. Agents are boundedly rational and base their investment decisions upon market forecasting heuristics....

We investigate expectation formation in a controlled experimental environment. Subjects are asked to predict the price in a standard asset pricing model. They do not have knowledge of the underlying market equilibrium equations, but they know all past realized prices and their own predictions....

In a laboratory experiment designed to capture key aspects of the interaction between physicians and patients in a stylized way, we study the effects of medical insurance and competition in the guise of free choice of physician. Medical treatment is an example of a credence good: only the...

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....

Building on a theoretical model we test the hypothesis that effort choices and preferences for redistribution are simultaneously determined. Using cross-country panel data from the World Value Survey, we find that it is important to model preferences for redistribution and effort choices...

Evidence from an experiment investigating the “house money effect” in the context of a public goods game is reconsidered. Analysis is performed within the framework of the panel hurdle model, in which subjects are assumed to be one of two types: free-riders, and potential contributors. The...

Punishees regularly ask for justification. But is justification also effective? To answer this question under controlled conditions, we have conducted a public goods experiment with central punishment. The authority is neutral – she does not benefit from contributions to the public good....

Antitrust authorities all over the world are concerned if a particularly aggressive competitor, a "maverick", is bought out of the market. Yet there is a lack of theoretical justification. One plausible determinant of acting as a maverick is behavioral: the maverick derives utility from acting...

Sanctions are often so weak that a money maximizing individual would not be deterred. In this paper I show that they may nonetheless serve a forward looking purpose if sufficiently many individuals are averse against advantageous inequity. Using the Fehr/Schmidt model (QJE 1999) I define three...