The literature on R&D contests implicitly assumes that contestants submit their innovation regardless of its value. This ignores a potential adverse selection problem. The present paper analyzes the procurement of innovations when the procurer cannot commit to never bargain with innovators who...

Several recent papers argue that contracts provide reference points that affect ex post behavior. We test this hypothesis in a canonical buyer-seller relationship with renegotiation. Our paper provides causal experimental evidence that an initial contract has a highly significant and...

The Coase theorem posits: If [1] property rights are perfect, [2] contracts are enforceable, [3] preferences are common knowledge, and [4] transaction costs are zero, then the initial alloca-tion of property rights only matters for distribution, not for efficiency. In this paper we claim that...

This paper reports results from a laboratory experiment studying the role of asymmetries, both in payoffs and recognition probabilities, in a model of strategic bargaining with Condorcet cycles. Overall, we find only limited support for the equilibrium predictions. The main deviations from...

In this paper we want to analyze the internal divisional structure within an organi-zation in the framework of incomplete contract theory. We use the framework of Aghionand Tirole (1997) and define the managerial control structure as sequence of search.A key feature of this paper which...

We introduce a form of pre-play communication that we call preopening. During the preopening, players announce their tentative actions to be played in the underlying game. Announcements are made using a posting system which is subject to stochastic failures. Posted actions are publicly...

We introduce one-way games, a two-player framework whose distinguishable feature is that the private payoff of one (independent) player is determined only by her own strategy and does not depend on the actions taken by the other (dependent) player. We show that the equilibrium outcome in one-way...

Although reciprocity is a key concept in the social sciences, it is still unclear why people engage in costly reciprocation. In this study, physiological and self-report measures were employed to investigate the role of emotions, using the Power-to-Take Game. In this 2-person game, player 1 can...