We conduct a laboratory experiment to analyze the effect transactions costs and inertia have on charitable giving. We conjecture that transaction costs will have a greater effect on donations if the solicitation is received when the opportunity cost of time is high. Inertia could become a factor...

We develop, and experimentally test, models of informal agreements. Agents are assumed to be honest but suffer costs of overcoming temptations. We extend two classical bargaining solutions -- split-the-difference and deal-me-out -- to this informal agreement setting. For each solution there are...

Should one use words or money to foster trust of the other party if no means of enforcing trustworthiness are available? This paper reports an experiment studying the effectiveness of two types of mechanisms for promoting trust: a costly gift and a costless message as well as their mutual...

Previous research has suggested that communication and especially promises increase cooperation in laboratory experiments. This has been taken as evidence for internal motivations such as guilt aversion or preference for promise keeping. The original goal of this paper was to examine promises...

We develop and test experimentally the argument that gender/family and/or professional identities, activated through priming, influence preference for competition. We focus on female professionals for whom these identities may conflict and male professionals for whom they may be reinforcing. We...

The hold-up problem has played a central role in the study of firm boundaries, which is a fundamental element of the economic study of organizations. We study a previously unexplored mechanism by which integration between two parties could mitigate the problem. Based on the social identity...

Should one use words or money to foster trust of the other party if no means of enforcing trustworthiness are available? This paper reports an experiment studying the effectiveness of two types of mechanisms for promoting trust: a costly gift and a costless message as well as their mutual...