Using a laboratory experiment, we examine whether informal monetary sanctions can lead to better coordination in a repeated minimum effort coordination game. While most groups first experience inefficient coordination, the efficiency increases substantially after introducing an ex post...

We experimentally investigate a finitely repeated public good game with varying partners. Within each period, participants are pairwise matched and contribute simultaneously. Participants are informed about contributions and each participant evaluates her partner's contribution. At the beginning...

Both in the field and in the lab, participants frequently cooperate, despite the fact that the situation can be modelled as a simultaneous, symmetric prisoner's dilemma. This experiment manipulates the payoff in case both players defect, and explains the degree of cooperation by a combination of...

Growing interest in using personality variables in economic research leads to the question whether personality as measured by psychology is useful to predict economic behavior. Is it reasonable to expect values on personality scales to be predictive of behavior in economic games? It is undoubted...

The distinct historical and cultural experiences of American blacks and whites may influence whether members of those groups perceive a particular exchange as fair. We investigate racial differences in fairness standards using preferences for equal treatment in the ultimatum game, where...

Using an experimental approach, this paper examines how scarcity of natural resources affects people's readiness to cooperate and to engage in antisocial behaviour. The experiments were carried out with pastoralists from southern Namibia whose livelihoods are highly dependent on grazing...

If a decision maker, in a world of uncertainty à la Anscombe and Aumann (1963), can choose acts according to some objective probability distribution (by throwing dice for instance) from any given set of acts, then there is no set of acts that allows an experimenter to test more than the Axiom...

In the present work, I adopt the cognitive hierarchy approach to analyze the centipede game. To this end, I present and study an extensive-form version of Camerer et al.'s (2004) original normal-form model. The resulting predictions are evaluated empirically using laboratory data borrowed from a...

Recent research has cast some doubt on the general validity of outcome-based models of social preferences. We develop a model based on cognitive dissonance that focuses on the importance of self-image. An experiment (a dictator game variant) tests the model. First, we find that subjects whose...