Can a social norm of trust and reciprocity emerge among strangers? We investigate this question by examining behavior in an experiment where subjects repeatedly play a two-player binary “trust” game. Players are randomly and anonymously paired with one another in each period. The main...

We report on an experiment comparing compulsory and voluntary voting institutions in a voting game with common preferences. Rational choice theory predicts sharp differences in voter behavior between these two institutions. If voting is compulsory, then voters may find it rational to vote...

We consider implementation issues regarding two mechanisms that have been used to increase voter turnout in elections: fines and lotteries. We focus on the amount of the fine or lottery prize needed to achieve full participation. We then propose a combined, self-financing mechanism by which the...

The authors report and compare results from several different versions of an experimental interactive guessing game first studied by R. Nagel (1995), which they refer to as the 'beauty contest' game following J. M. Keynes (1936). In these games, groups of subjects are repeatedly asked to...

We examine the stability of equilibrium in sunspot-driven real business cycle (RBC) models under adaptive learning. We show that the general reduced form of this class of models can admit rational expectations equilibria that are both indeterminate and stable under adaptive learning....

This paper investigates how the introduction of social preferences affects players` equilibrium behavior in both one-shot and infinitely repeated versions of the Prisoner`s Dilemma game. We first show that defection survives as the unique equilibrium of the stage game if at least one player is...

. . .

We examine whether a simple agent--based model can generate asset price bubbles and crashes of the type observed in a series of laboratory asset market experiments beginning with the work of Smith, Suchanek and Williams (1988). We follow the methodology of Gode and Sunder (1993, 1997) and...