We resume the search for a collusive focal-point effect of price ceilings in laboratory markets. We argue that market conditions in previous studies were unfavorable for collusion which may have been responsible for not finding such a focal-point effect. Our design aims at maximizing the...

We analyze the provision of a step-level public good in an experiment. Specifically, we investigate how the order of moves and the introduction of a second step-level affects public-good provision. We find that the sequential-move game improves public-good provision and payoffs. An additional...

We investigate whether peer punishment is an efficient mechanism for enforcing cooperation in an experiment with a long time horizon. Previous evidence suggests that the costs of peer punishment can be outweighed by the benefits of higher cooperation, if (i) there is a sufficiently long time...

Optimal voting rules have to be adjusted to the underlying distribution of preferences. However, in practice there usually is no social planner who can perform this task. This paper shows that the introduction of a stage at which agents may themselves choose voting rules according to which they...

Before a group can take a decision, its members must agree on a mechanism to aggregate individual preferences. In this paper we present the results of an experiment on the influence of private payoff information and the role of the available alternatives on individuals’ mechanism choices in...

We conduct multi-person one-shot ultimatum games that reflect important aspects of collective bargaining. In all treatments a proposer has to divide a pie among herself and six recipients that are divided into two groups of three. The proposer cannot discriminate among, but across group members....

We present the results of an experiment that measures social preferences within couples in a context where intra-household pay-off inequality can be reduced at the cost of diminishing household income. We measure social norms regarding this efficiency-equality trade-off and implement a...

Economists tend to assume that agents maximize their expected utility. However, many different experiments have questioned expected utility maximization by showing that human behavior can be characterized as random. This paper proposes Thompson Sampling as a theory of human behavior across very...

This paper presents a new perspective on the nature of fairness in bargaining by using verbal data from spontaneous team discussions and written statements on decision motives. Systematic content analysis proves a valuable source for providing new insights. The nature of fairness can be viewed...