We use a laboratory experiment to examine whether and to what extent other-regarding preferences of team leaders influence their leadership style in choice under risk. We find that leaders who prefer efficiency or report high levels of selfishness are more likely to exercise an autocratic...

While most papers on team decision-making find that teams behave more selfishly, less trustingly and less altruistically than individuals, Cason and Mui (1997) report that teams are more altruistic than individuals in a dictator game. Using a within-subjects design we re-examine group...

I conduct an experiment to assess whether majority voting on a nonbinding sharing norm affects subsequent behavior in a dictator game. In a baseline treatment, subjects play a one shot dictator game. In a voting treatment, subjects are first placed behind a 'veil of ignorance' and vote on the...

Being the leader in a group often involves making risky decisions that affect the payoffs of all members, and the decision to take this responsibility in a group is endogenous in many contexts. In this paper, we experimentally study: (1) the willingness of men and women to make risky decisions...

This paper explores the effect of personality traits on: (1) the willingness to make risk-taking decisions on behalf of a group, (2) the nature of "choice shifts", i.e. the difference between the amount of risk taken in the group context and individually. Openness and agreeableness emerge as...

Considering a pure coordination game with a large number of equivalent equilibria, we argue, first, that a focal point that is itself not a Nash equilibrium and is Pareto dominated by all Nash equilibria, may attract the players' choices. Second, we argue that such a non-equilibrium focal point...

This paper both theoretically and experimentally studies the properties of plurality and approval voting when the majority is divided as a result of information imperfections. The minority backs a third alternative, which the majority views as strictly inferior. The majority thus faces two...

This is an experimental study of a three-player power-to-take game where a take authority is matched with two responders. The game consists of two stages. In the first stage, the take authority decides how much of the endowment of each responder that is left after the second stage will be...

We use a public-good experiment to analyze behavior in a decentralized asymmetric punishment institution. The institution is asymmetric in the sense that players differ in the effectiveness of their punishment. At the aggregate level, we observe remarkable similarities between outcomes in...

The rational-voter model is often criticized on the grounds that two of its central predictions (the paradox of voting and Duverger's Law) are at odds with reality. Recent theoretical advances suggest that these empirically unsound predictions might be an artifact of an (arguably unrealistic)...