We consider two-stage tournaments with different information structures: Either competitors observe each others’ first-stage effort before entering the second stage or not. In laboratory experiments, we observe that subjects adjust their effort to the effort information (if available): While...

Shaming can be either of two types, shaming that becomes stigmatization of the offender and favors his exclusion from the community, or shaming that is followed by forgiveness and reintegration of the deviant. Here we test experimentally these aspects of shaming theory with a repeated...

There is overwhelming evidence of reciprocal behavior, driven by intentions. However, the role of consequences is less clear cut. Experimentally manipulating how efficient trust and reciprocity can be in deterministic and uncertain environments allows us to study how payoff consequences of trust...

This paper examines the voluntary formation of centralized sanctioning institutions. We introduce a simple model to study institution formation as a second-order cooperation problem where voluntary contributions to a common fund serve as an instrument to finance centralized sanctioning...

This paper examines the one-dollar auction game ruling out escalation. The aim of the paper is to understand if players’ expectations about competitors’ moves are strong enough to induce at least one player to bid more than the auctioned euro. Any other bid represents an expected loss for...