Many important decisions are taken according to weighted majority rule. Power indices predict that enlargement of the 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 existing voters may...

We compare the performances of uniform price auctions with fixed price offerings using laboratory experiments. In the uniform treatment, there is no evidence that the tacit collusion equilibria, which predict symmetric behaviors among bidders, have been achieved. On the contrary, in accordance...

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...

This paper discusses the empirical evidence from lab and field experiments on voluntary cooperation. We present the most important findings from numerous public goods experiments and argue that conditional cooperation (contributions are conditional on other people’s contribution) is a primary...

Loss aversion, the fact that losses have a greater impact than gains, is a fundamental property of behavioral accounts of choice. In this paper, we suggest four possible characterizations of the relative impact of losses and gains: (1) It could be a constant, such as the much cited value of 2,...

We present a new theory of decision under risk called third-generation prospect theory. A novel feature of our version of prospect theory is that, by allowing reference points to be uncertain, it is able to accommodate the phenomenon of preference reversal. While several previous theories of...

We analyze voting in private and public committees whose members care about the selected decision and the rewards which outsiders pay for representing their interests. We characterize the voting pattern and performance in both committees; and we test these implications on the voting patterns of...

We use an experiment to compare two institutions for allocating the proceeds of team production. Under revenue-sharing, each team member receives an equal share of team output; under leader-determined shares, a team leader has the power to implement her own allocation. Both arrangements are...

We analyze optimal appointments to a committee whose members play an admissibly coalition proof equilibrium. The nominator may appoint a candidate with the opposite preference ordering over the agenda, as the committee would then reach the nominator’s top ranked decision by divide and rule:...

One lingering puzzle is why voluntary contributions to public goods decline over time in experimental and real-world settings. We show that the decline of cooperation is driven by individual preferences for imperfect conditional cooperation. Many people’s desire to contribute less than others,...