Social norms permeate society across a wide range of issues and are important to understanding how societies function. In this paper we concentrate on 'bad' social norms - those that are inefficient or even damaging to a group. This paper explains how bad social norms evolve and persist; our...

The classical price competition model (named after Bertrand), prescribes that in equilibrium prices are equal to marginal costs. Moreover, prices do not depend on the number of competitors. Since this outcome is not in line with real-life observations, it is known as the Bertrand Paradox. Many...

Can algorithms help people predict behavior in high-stakes prisoner’s dilemmas? Participants watching the pre-play communication of contestants in the TV show Golden Balls display a limited ability to predict contestants’ behavior, while algorithms do significantly better. We provide...

Environmentalists often urge their home countries to take a leading role in reducing global environmental problems like climate change. A pertinent question is: will examples set by leading nations influence others to follow suit, and if so, do the costs of leading matter? For instance, will...

We compare signaling by words and actions in a one-shot 2-person public good game with private information. The informed player, who knows the exact return from contributing, can signal by contributing first (actions) or by sending a costless message (words). Words can be about the return or...

In an experimental setting some Danish unemployed workers were assigned to an activation program while others were not. Unemployed who were assigned to the activation program found a job more quickly. We show that the activation effect increases with the distance between the place of residence...

We analyze the incidence and welfare e¤ects of unit sales taxes in experimental monopoly and Bertrand markets. We nd, in line with economic theory, that rms with no market power are able to shift a high share of a tax burden on to consumers, independent of whether buyers are automated or human...

This paper investigates how a mandatory activation program in Denmark affects the job finding rate of unemployed workers.The activation program was introduced in an experimental setting where about half of the workers who became unemployed in the period from November 2005 to March 2006 were...