In a novel experimental design, we study how social immobility affects the choice among distributional schemes in an experimental democracy. We design a two-period experiment in which subjects first choose a distributional scheme by majority voting (“social contract”). Then subjects engage...

We study how different payment modes inuence the effectiveness of gift exchange as a contract enforcement device. In particular, we analyze how horizontal fairness concerns affect performance and efficiency in an environment characterized by contractual incompleteness. In our experiment, one...

The importance of fair and equal treatment of workers is at the heart of the debate in organizational management. In this regard, we study how reward mechanisms and production technologies affect effort provision in teams. Our experimental results demonstrate that unequal rewards can potentially...

We compare, on the basis of a procedurally fair "provision point" mechanism, bids for a public project from which some gain and some lose with bids for a less efficient public project from which all gain. In the main treatment, participants independently decide which one, if any, of the public...

In this paper we show that a simple model of fairness preferences explains major experimental regularities of common pool resource (CPR) experiments. The evidence indicates that in standard CPR games without communication and without sanctioning possibilities inefficient excess appropriation is...

In many business transactions, in labor-management relations, in internationalconflicts, and welfare state reforms bargainers hold strong entitlements that are oftengenerated by claims that are not feasible any more. These entitlements seem to considerablyshape negotiation behavior. By using the...

Theoretical research on claims problems has concentrated on normative properties and axiomatizations of solution concepts. We complement these analyses by empirical evidence on the predictability of three classical solution concepts in a bankruptcy problem. We examine both people's impartial...

We compare inequality aversion in individuals and teams by means of both within- and between-subject experimental designs, and we investigate how teams aggregate individual preferences. We find that team decisions reveal less inequality aversion than individual initial proposals in team...

This paper derives and justifies a procedurally fair bidding mechanism and reviews experiments that apply the mechanism to public projects provision. In the experiments, not all parties benefit from provision, and the projects ́costs can be negative. The experimental results indicate that the...

This paper experimentally examines a procedurally fair provision mechanism allowing members of a small community to determine, via their bids, which of four alternative public projects to implement. Previous experiments with positive cost projects have demonstrated that the mechanism is...