In a duopoly market, aspiration levels express how much sellers want to earn given their expectations about the other's behavior. We augment the sellers' decision task by eliciting their profit aspiration. In a first experimental phase, whenever satisficing is not possible, sales choices, point...

Two major methods of explaining economic institutions, namely by strategic choices or through (indirect) evolution, are compared for the case of a homogenous quadratic duopoly market. Sellers either can provide incentives for agents to care for sales, or evolve as sellers who care for sales in...

We present a model of price leadership on homogeneous product markets where the price leader is selected endogenously. The price leader sets and guarantees a sales price to which followers can adjust according to their individual supply functions. The price leader then clears the market by...

We present a model of price leadership on homogeneous product markets where the price leader is selected endogenously. The price leader sets and guarantees a sales price to which followers adjust according to their individual supply functions. The price leader clears the market by serving the...

Theoretically and experimentally, we generalize the analysis of acquiring a company (Samuelson and Bazerman 1985) by allowing for competition of both, buyers and sellers. Naivety of both is related to the idea that higher prices exclude worse qualities. While competition of naive buyers...

Like Feinberg and Sherman (1985) and Phillips and Mason (1992) we test experimentally whether conglomerate firms, i.e., firms competing on multiple structurally unrelated markets, can effectively limit competition. Our more general analysis assumes differentiated rather than homogeneous products...

In a market with stochastic demand at most one seller can acquire costly information about demand. Other sellers entertain idiosyncratic beliefs about the market demand and the probability that an informed seller is trading in the market. These idiosyncratic beliefs co-evolve with the potential...

On a heterogeneous experimental oligopoly market, sellers choose a price, specify a set-valued prior-free conjecture about the others' behavior, and form their own profit-aspiration for each element of their conjecture. We formally define the concepts of satisficing and prior-free optimality and...

On a homogeneous oligopoly market informed sellers are fully aware of market demand whereas uninformed sellers only know the distribution. We first derive the market results when sellers are risk averse, similarly to Ponssard (1979) who assumed risk neutrality throughout. With the help of these...

On a heterogeneous experimental oligopoly market, sellers choose a price,specify a set-valued prior-free conjecture about the others' behavior, andform their own profit-aspiration for each element of their conjecture. Weformally define the concepts of satisficing and prior-free optimality...