This survey explores the contributions of behavioral economics, laboratory experiments, and field experiments to our understanding of the economics of trust, trustworthiness, and reciprocal behavior. A general summary presenting the evolution of trust and reciprocity, departing from pure...

We explore the effects of social distance on reciprocal behavior in an experiment conducted over the Internet on three continents and in classroom laboratory sessions conducted in Israel and Spain. Our design elicitsindividual behavior profiles over a range of contingencies, enabling us to...

We explore the effects of social distance on reciprocal behavior in an experiment conducted over the Internet on three continents and in classroom laboratory sessions conducted in Israel and Spain. Our design elicits individual behavior profiles over a range of contingencies, enabling us to...

This paper presents evidence that the willingness to punish an unfair action is sensitive to whether this action was preceded by a deceptive message. One player first sends a message indicating an intended play, which is either favorable or unfavorable to the other player in the game. After the...

Do people care about intentions? Good intentions often do not produce good results when a person tries to do something nice for someone else. In this paper, we ask under what circumstances do people pay attention to outcomes and under what circumstances do they focus on intentions. While the...

Lecture on the first SFB/TR 15 meeting, Gummersbach, July, 18 - 20, 2004: We report on several experiments on the optimal allocation of ownership rights. The experiments confirm the property rights approach by showing that the ownership structure affects relationship-specific investments and...

Chapter written for the Handbook of Reciprocity, Gift-Giving and Altruism

Recently developed models of fairness can explain a wide variety of seemingly contradictory facts. The most controversial and yet unresolved issue in the modeling of fairness preferences concerns the behavioral relevance of fairness intentions. Intuitively, fairness intentions seem to play an...

Most economic models are based on the self-interest hypothesis that assumes that all people are exclusively motivated by their material self-interest. In recent years experimental economists have gathered overwhelming evidence that systematically refutes the self-interest hypothesis and suggests...