The evolution of trustworthiness as a major aspect of business ethics depends crucially on whether it can be signaled. If this is impossible, only opportunistic traders will survive. Whereas previous studies have analysed detection agencies (Güth and Kliemt, 1994 and 1998) or have substituted...

In a market with stochastic demand at most one seller can acquire costly information about demand. Other sellers entertain idiosyncratic beliefs about the market demand and the probability that an informed seller is trading in the market. These idiosyncratic beliefs co-evolve with the potential...

Can a court system conceivably control opportunistic behavior if judges are selected from the same population as ordinary citizens and thus are no better than the rest of us? This paper provides a new and, as we claim, quite profound rational choice answer to that unsolved riddle. Adopting an...