Principal-agent problems can reduce gains from exchange available in long distance trade. One solution to mitigate this problem is multilateral punishment, whereby groups of principals jointly punish cheating agents by giving them bad reputations. But how does such punishment work when there is...

We investigate the effect of absence of common knowledge on the outcomes of coordination games in a laboratory experiment. Using cognitive types, we can explain coordination failure in pure coordination games while differentiating between coordination failure due to first- and higher-order...

In procurement auctions, bidders are usually better informed about technical, financial, or legal aspects of the goods and services procured. Therefore, the buyer may include a dialogue in the procurement procedure which enables the suppliers to reveal information that will help the buyer to...

In economic environments, decision-makers can strategically delay irreversible investments to learn from the actions of others. This creates free-riding incentives and can lead to socially suboptimal outcomes. We experimentally examine if and how communication mitigates this free-riding problem...

There is a substantial literature examining coordination in public goods games. We conducted an experiment to explore how varying patterns of thresholds affect the willingness of subjects to contribute to a public good. We had subjects play a multiperiod game where each subject was allocated an...

We experimentally study behavior in a simple voting game where players have private information about their preferences. With random matching, subjects overwhelmingly follow the dominant strategy to exaggerate their preferences, which leads to inefficiency. We analyze an exogenous linking...

In this paper we test the effect of descriptive "features" on initial strategic behavior in normal form games, where "descriptive" are all those features that can be modified without altering the (Nash) equilibrium structure of a game. We observe that our experimental subjects behave according...

In a laboratory experiment, we investigate if groups consisting of two heterogeneous player types (with different marginal contribution costs) can increase their total contributions and payoffs in a threshold public goods game if transfer payments are possible among the players. We find that...

In a step-level public-good experiment, we investigate how the order of moves (simultaneous vs. sequential) and the number of step levels (one vs. two) affects public-good provision in a two-player game. We find that the sequential order of moves significantly improves public-good provision and...

The paper presents the concept of an imitation equilibrium and explores it in the context of some simple oligopoly models. The concept applies to normal form games enriched by a reference structure specifying a reference group for every player. The reference group is a set of other players, whom...