In a public goods experiment, subjects can vary over a period of stochasticlength two contribution levels: one is publicly observable (their cheap talkstated intention), while the other is not seen by the others (their secretintention). When the period suddenly stops, participants are restricted...

We experimentally examine how group identity affects trust behaviorin an investment game. In one treatment, group identity isinduced purely by minimal groups. In other treatments, group membersare additionally related by outcome interdependence establishedin a prior public goods game. Moving...

We study an ultimatum experiment in which the responder does not know the offer when accepting or rejecting. Unconditional veto power leads to acceptances, although proposers are significantly greedier than in standard ultimatum games, and this is anticipated by responders.

We experimentally investigate whether the satisficing approach isabsorbable, i.e., whether it still applies after participants become awareof it. In a setting where an investor decides between a riskless bondand either one or two risky assets, we familiarize participants with thesatisficing...

Applying an evolutionary framework, we investigate how a reputation mechanism and abuyer insurance (as used on Internet market platforms such as eBay) interact to promote trustworthinessand trust. Our analysis suggests that the costs involved in giving reliable feedbackdetermine the gains from...

Medical doctors act as agents of their patients by either treating them directly orreferring them to other more or differently specialized doctors, who therebybecome “agents of agents”. The main aim of this paper is to model centralaspects of such two-layered agency relations in the medical...

Leadership is important for the well-functioning of organizations. Weexamine the effects of leadership on contributions in public goods experiments.Leadership by example is implemented by letting one groupmember contribute to the public good before followers do. Such leadershipincreases...

A robust nding of repeated public goods experiments is that high initialcontribution rates sharply decline towards the end. This paper reports onan exploratory experiment designed to discover whether such a decline is simply triggered by the usual experimental practice of publicly informing...

Retributive responses do play a role in human behavior. Whether they are primarily triggered by supposed intentions or by observed consequences of actions is an important question. It can be addressed by experimental studies of retributive responses in situations in which the individual actor my...

Whether incentive contracts perform better than trust in terms of productiveefficiency is usually explored by principal-agent experiments (mostinvolving only one agent). We investigate this issue in the context of athree-person ultimatum experiment, which is simpler and more neutrallyframed than...