We conducted six treatments of a standard moral hazard experiment with hidden action. All treatments had identical Nash equilibria. However, the behavior in all treatments and periods was inconsistent with established agency theory (Nash equilibrium). In the early periods of the experiment,...

Hart and Moore (2008) argue that varying degrees of flexibility in contracts induce differing reference points and aspiration levels for parties’ shares of a transaction’s total surplus. As a consequence, a trade-off between adaptational flexibility and the prevention of distributional...

In 1931 Harold Hotelling published his seminal contribution to the economic theory of exhaustible resources. His major insight states that the prices of exhaustible resources - more specifically the scarcity rent - will rise at the rate of interest, and consumption will decline over time. The...

We provide experimental evidence for the hypothesis that bounded rationality is an important element of the theory of the firm. We implement a simplified version of a mechanism that was designed in order to perfectly solve the holdup problem under conditions of perfect rationality (Maskin 2002)....

In a hold-up experiment designed to test theoretical predictions following from Hart and deMeza and Lockwood regarding investment behavior, Sonnemans, Oosterbeek and Sloof (SOS) find only a partial confirmation of theory. According to SOS these deviations from standard theory can be explained by...

This paper is about conscious parallelism in a duopoly with differentiated products. Conscious parallelism is modelled by a "policy of fixed relative prices" (frp) i. e. starting from a competitive equilibrium both duopolists vary prices by the same percentage. This price increasing continues...

Mit Hilfe spieltheoretischer ansätze wurde versucht, die Grundgedanken der Neuen Institutionsökonomik auf eine formale Basis zu stellen. es wird untersucht, inwieweit dabei Erkenntnisfortschritte erzielt wurden. Der Schwerpunkt wird auf die Fundierung der Transaktionskostenökonomiek gelegt....

Recent research has shown the usefulness of social preferences in explaining behavior in laboratory experiments. This paper demonstrates that models of social preferences are particularly powerful in explaining behavior if they are embedded in a setting of heterogeneous actors with heterogeneous...

Recent research has shown the usefulness of social preferences for explaining behavior in laboratory experiments. This paper demonstrates that models of social preferences are particularly powerful in explaining behavior if they are embedded in a setting of heteroge-neous actors with...

This paper provides experimental evidence on exit behavior of asymmetrically sized firms in a duopoly with declining demand. We conduct three treatments: (a) The basic model with indivisible real capital. The structure of this treatment represents the main findings of Ghemawat and Nalebuff...