This paper experimentally explores group decision-making in a two-player power-to-take game. Discussions preceding group decisions are video taped and analyzed. Each subject first earns an income in an individual effort task preceding the game. The game consists of two stages. First, one group...

We study how punishment influences conditional cooperation. We ask two questions: 1) how does conditional cooperation change if a subject can be punished and 2) how does conditional cooperation change if a subject has the power to punish others. In particular, we disentangle the decision to be a...

We analyze gender differences in the trust game in a behind the veil of ignorance design. This method yields strategies that are consistent with actions observed in the classical trust game experiments. We observe that, on average, men and women do not differ in trust, and that women are...

Using belief elicitation, the paper investigates the formation and the evolution of beliefs in a signalling game in which a common prior on Sender's type is not induced. Beliefs are elicited about the type of the Sender and about the strategies of the players. The experimental subjects often...

The provision of public goods regularly embodies interrelated spheres of influence on multiple scales. This article examines the nature of human behavior in a multilevel social dilemma game with positive provision externalities to local and global scales. We report experimental results showing...

Numerous studies suggest that communication may be a universal means to mitigate collective action problems. In this study, we challenge this view and show that the communication structure crucially determines whether communication mitigates or intensifies the problem of collective action. We...