We present experiments exploring why high ability workers join teams with less able co-workers when there are no short-term financial benefits. We distinguish between two explanations: pro-social preferences and expected long-term financial gains from teaching future teammates. Participants...

Using a negatively framed public good game, we study the cooperative behavior of individuals who reintegrate their group after being excluded by their peers. We manipulate the length of exclusion and whether this length is imposed exogenously or results from a vote. We show that people are...

Studying the likelihood that individuals cheat requires a valid statistical measure of dishonesty. We develop an easy empirical method to measure and compare lying behavior within and across studies to correct for sampling errors. This method estimates the full distribution of lying when agents...

We theoretically show that agents with loss-averse preferences facing a decision to receive a bad financial payoff if they report honestly or to receive a better financial payoff if they report dishonestly are more likely to lie to avoid receiving the low payoff the lower the ex-ante probability...

The authors test the hypothesis that individual effort on the job depends both on one's own income and on the individual's position in the relevant income distribution. Combining experimental evidence from a gift-exchange game with multi-country ISSP survey data, they analyze the extent to which...

This paper reports on an experimental study of the influence of asymmetric information and information spillovers on bargaining outcomes. It develops and tests Kuhn and Gu's model (1999) of learning in sequential wage negotiations, by means of two Ultimatum Bargaining Games with uncertainty on...

Although economics has long been considered as a non-experimental science, the development of experimental economics and behavioral economics is amazingly rapid and affects most fields of research. This paper first attempts at defining the main contributions of experiments to economics. It also...

In this paper we replicate and extend the experiment of Fehr and Gaechter (2000) that analyzes the effect of an opportunity to punish others on the level contributions in the Voluntary Contributions Mechanism. The punishment is costly for both the players distributing and those receiving the...

Although economics has long been considered as a non-experimental science, the development of experimental economics and behavioral economics is amazingly rapid and affects most fields of research. This paper first attempts at defining the main contributions of experiments to economics. It also...

Can a company attract a different type of employee by changing its compensation scheme? Is it sufficient to pay more to increase employees’ motivation? Should a firm provide evaluation feedback to employees based on their absolute or their relative performance? Laboratory experiments can help...