In a novel experimental design, we study how social immobility affects the choice among distributional schemes in an experimental democracy. We design a two-period experiment in which subjects first choose a distributional scheme by majority voting (“social contract”). Then subjects engage...

Strategy-proofness, requiring that truth-telling be a dominant strategy, is a standard concept in social choice theory. However, this concept has serious drawbacks. In particular, many strategy-proof mechanisms have multiple Nash equilibria, some of which produce the wrong outcome. A possible...

Despite advances in the field, we still know little about the socio-cognitive processes of team decisions, particularly their emergence from an individual level and transition to a team level. This study investigates team decision processes by using an agent-based model to conceptualize team...

In der Politik sind wie im Geschäftsleben oft riskante beziehungsweise gefährliche Entscheidungen zu treffen, bei denen die Ergebnisse nur schwer oder gar nicht prognostizierbar sind. Da Menschen in ihren Einstellungen gegenüber Risiken und Gefahren variieren, ist es vernünftig, dass in...

Politics and business often involve making risky or dangerous decisions whose outcomes can be predicted only with difficulty, if at all. As attitudes toward risks and dangers vary between individuals, it is reasonable that people with different attitudes are active in areas requiring decisions...

This paper explores the dynamics of nation-building policies and the conditions under which a state can promote a shared national identity on its territory. A forward-looking central government that internalizes identity dynamics shapes them by choosing the level of state centralization....

Using a unique experimental data set, we investigate how asymmetric legal rights shape bargainers' aspiration levels through moral entitlements derived from equity norms and number prominence. Aspiration formation is typically hard to observe in real life. Our study involves 15 negotiations from...

The paper surveys the experimental literature on centralized matching markets, covering school choice and college admissions models. In the school choice model, one side of the market (schools) is not strategic, and rules (priorities) guide the acceptance decisions. The model covers applications...

There is a potential free-rider problem when several siblings consider future provision of care for their elderly parents. Siblings can commit to not providing long- term support by living far away. If location decisions are made by birth order, older siblings may enjoy a first-mover advantage....

We consider dynamic team production in the presence of uncertainty. Team members receive interim feedback that depends on both their current effort level and the project's uncertain prospects. In this environment, each member can encourage the others by making them more optimistic about the...