While numerous experiments demonstrate how pro-sociality can influence economic decision-making, evidence on explicitly anti-social economic behavior has thus far been limited. In this paper we investigate the importance of spite in experimental rent-seeking contests. Although, as we show,...

We report the results of laboratory experiments on rent-seeking contests with endogenous participation. Theory predicts that (a) contest entry and rent-seeking expenditures increase with the size of the prize; and (b) earnings are equalized between the contest and the outside option. While the...

We provide a direct test of the role of social preferences in voluntary cooperation. We elicit individuals’ cooperation preference in one experiment and make a point prediction about the contribution to a repeated public good. This allows for a novel test as to whether there are "types" of...

Power indices suggest that adding new members to a voting body may affect the balance of power between the original members even if their number of votes and the decision rule remain constant. Some of the original members may actually gain, a phenomenon known as the paradox of new members. We...

The paper reports an experiment which tests the principle of separability, i.e. that behaviour in a dynamic choice problem is independent of history and of unreachable eventualities. Although this is a standard principle of decision theory, it can be questioned on grounds suggested by...

This paper presents an experimental study of dynamic indefinite horizon R&D races with uncertainty and multiple prizes. The theoretical predictions are highly sensitive: small parameter changes determine whether technological competition is sustained, or converges into a market structure with an...

An extensive literature demonstrates the existence of framing effects in the laboratory and in questionnaire studies. This paper reports new evidence from a natural field experiment using a subject pool one may consider as particularly resistant to such effects: experimental economists. We find...

Understanding the proximate and ultimate sources of human cooperation is a fundamental issue in all behavioural sciences. In this article we review the experimental evidence on how people solve cooperation problems. Existing studies show without doubt that direct and indirect reciprocity are...

Incentives to innovate is a central element of innovation theory. In the private-investment model, innovators privately fund innovation and then use intellectual property protection mechanisms to appropriate returns from these investments. In the collective-action model, public subsidy funds...

We present a simple classroom principal-agent experiment that can effectively be used as a teaching device to introduce important concepts of organizational economics and contracting. In a first part, students take the role of a principal and design a contract that consists of a fixed payment...