We tested the effects of various of policy rules on retailer behavior in laboratory experiments conducted at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories. Our experimental design models the multifaceted contemporary market for consumer computer products and is quite complex, but we found that participants can...

This paper investigates whether information about generosity or fairness can be useful in lowering dispute costs and enhancing bargaining efficiency. Subjects were first screened using a dictator game, with the allocations chosen used to separate participants into two types. Mutually anonymous...

Previous indirect evidence suggests that impulses towards pro-social behavior are diminished when an external authority is responsible for an outcome. The responsibility-alleviation effect states that a shift of responsibility to an external authority dampens internal impulses toward honesty,...

The effectiveness of pre-play communication in achieving efficient outcomes has long been a subject of controversy. In some environments, cheap talk may help to achieve coordination. However, Aumann conjectures that, in a variant of the Stag Hunt game, a signal for efficient play is not...

Are men more willing to take financial risks than women? The answer to this question has immediate relevance for many economic issues. We propose a novel approach in which we assemble the data from 10 sets of experiments with one simple underlying investment game. Most of these experiments were...

In experiments with two-person sequential games we analyze whether responses to favorable and unfavorable actions depend on the elicitation procedure. In our 'hot' treatment the second player responds to the first player's observed action while in our 'cold' treatment we follow the 'strategy...

The Winner’s Curse (WC) is one of the most robust and persistent deviations fromtheoretical predictions that has been established in experimental economics and claimed to exist in many field environments. There have been many attempts to explain the winner’s curse, such as ignoring...

This paper presents the first laboratory study of risk-sharing without commitment. Our experiment captures the main features of a simple model of voluntary insurance between two agents. In the model, two individuals interact over a potential infinite horizon and suffer random income shocks....

Traffic congestion is a substantial time cost for many urban commuters. This paper studies the response of subjects in an experimental setting in which subjects choose between a short direct route that becomes increasingly congested as more people travel on it and a more indirect route that does...

Social norms involve observation by others and external sanctions for violations,while moral norms involve introspection and internal sanctions. We develop a simple model ofindividual preferences that incorporates moral and social norms. We then examine dictatorchoices, where we create a shared...