The paper presents a complete information model of bidding in second price sealed-bid and ascending-bid (English) auctions, in which potential buyers know the unit valuation of other bidders and may spitefully prefer that their rivals earn a lower surplus. Bidders with spiteful preferences...

Experimental and empirical evidence shows that the utility an individual derives from a certain state depends on the reference state she compares it to. According to economic theory, the reference state is determined by past, present and future outcomes of either the individual herself or her...

In two-person generosity games, the proposer’s agreement payoff is exogenously given, whereas that of the responder is endogenously determined by the proposer’s choice of the pie size. In three-person generosity games, equal agreement payoffs for two of the players are either exogenously...

The literature on social norms has often stressed that social disapproval is crucial to foster compliance with norms and promote fair and cooperative behavior. With this in mind, we explore the disapproval of allocation decisions using experimental data from five dictator games with a feedback...

We report results from experimental first-price, sealed-bid, all-pay auctions for a good with a common and known value. We observe bidding strategies in groups of two and three bidders and under two extreme information conditions. As predicted by the Nash equilibrium, subjects use mixed...

This paper presents results from an experiment studying a two-person 4x4 pure coordination game. We seek to identify a labeling of actions that induces subjects to select all options with the same probability. Such a display of actions must be free from salient properties that might be used by...

In the two-person sequential best shot game, first player 1 contributes to a public good and then player 2 is informed about this choice before contributing. The payoff from the public good is the same for both players and depends only on the maximal contribution. Efficient voluntary cooperation...

In this paper, we describe a series of laboratory experiments that implement specific examples of a more general network structure and we examine equilibrium selection. Specifically, actions are either strategic substitutes or strategic complements, and participants have either complete or...

We test the hypothesis that smiles perceived as honest serve as a signal that has evolved to induce cooperation in situations requiring mutual trust. Potential trustees (84 participants from Toulouse, France) made two video clips averaging around 15 seconds for viewing by potential senders...

In the two-person sequential best shot game, first player 1 contributes to a public good and then player 2 is informed about this choice before contributing. The payoff from the public good is the same for both players and depends only on the maximal contribution. Efficient voluntary cooperation...