Taking seriously the philosophical foundations of classical strategic theories of choice-making we scrutinize to what extent planning on equilibrium strategies can be justified "eductively" among rational players and how this can be utilizes to analyze games by their "game-like" sub-structures,...

Problems of social coordination can be formalized as non-cooperative games with several equilibria. We know that in such situations serious problems of equilibrium selection arise which cannot be solved by traditional game theoretical reasoning. Conventions seem to be a powerful tool to solve...

This paper focuses on the uneasy alliance of rational choice and evolutionary explanations in modern economics. While direct evolutionary explanations of "optimality" rule out "purposeful" rational choice by assuming zero-intelligence and pure rational choice explanations leave no room for...

In this paper we consider conventions as regularities in behavior which help to solve coordination problems in a society. These problems can be formalized as non-cooperative games with several equilibria. We know that in such situations serious problems of equilibrium selection arise which...

Taking seriously the philosophical foundations of classical strategic theories of choice-making we scrutinize to what extent planning on equilibrium strategies can be justified "eductively" among rational players and how this can be utilized to analyze games by their "game-like" sub-structures,...

This paper focuses on the uneasy alliance of rational choice and evolutionary explanations in modern economics. While direct evolutionary explanations rule out "purposeful" rational choice by assuming "zero-intelligence" and pure rational choice explanations leave no room for "selective"...

In a stochastic duopoly market, sellers must form state-specific aspirations expressing how much they want to earn given their expectations about the other's behavior. We define individually and mutually satisficing sales behavior for given individual beliefs and aspiration profiles. In a first...

If the future market wage is uncertain, engaging in long-term employment is risky, with the risk depending on how regulated the labor market is. In our experiment long-term employment can result either from offering long-term contracts or from repeatedly and mutually opting for rematching....

There is robust field data showing that a frequent and successful way of looking for a job is via the intermediation of friends and relatives. Here we want to explore this experimentally. Participants first play a simple public good game with two interaction partners ("friends"), and share...