This paper addresses the interaction of voter information and seniority on electoral accountability. We test whether information leads voters to be less tolerant of moral hazard in a legislative system favoring seniority. A simple game theoretic model is used to predict outcomes in a pork-barrel...

It has long been standard in agency theory to search for incentive-compatible mechanisms on the assumption that people care only about their own material wealth. However, this assumption is clearly refuted by numerous experiments, and we feel that it may be useful to consider nonpecuniary...

The increasing wage inequality in many countries is usually seen as brought about by economic forces that drive for economic efficiency within a changing technological and social environment. Ethical evaluations of these developments diverge, yet the view that free labor markets drive to...

People are investing their life savings in financial products, for instance, to provide for their retirement, and in doing so they are making their future financial situation almost entirely dependent on the success of these investments. The financial sector promotes numerous investment...

This paper revisits and extends the experiment on the solidarity gameby Selten and Ockenfels (1998). We replicate the basic design of the solidaritygame and extend it in order to test the robustness of the fixed totalsacrifice' effect and the applied strategy method. Our results only...

A cyclical network of indirect reciprocity is derived organizing 3- or6-person groups into rings of social interaction where the first individualcan help the second, the second the third, and so on till the last, who inreturn can help the first. Mutual cooperation is triggered by assuming...

We experimentally investigate whether individuals can reliably detect cooperators in an anonymous decision environment by allowing participants to condition their choices in an asymmetric prisoner's dilemma and a trust game (i) on their partner's donation share to a self-selected charity, and...

Individuals are prone to significant errors when making value judgements through the use of heuristics (cognitive short cuts) to simplify decision making. This paper uses an economic experiment to investigate the strength of arbitrary anchors in judgements over house prices among a student...

It is firmly established that human judgement and decision making can fall short of the standard required in the Behavioral Decision Theory of von Neumann and Morgenstern (1947). Consumers in particular seem vulnerable to systematic errors of judgement which affect their choice behaviour,...

We report experimental evidence on second-movers' behavior in the investment game (also known as the trust game) when there exists endowment heterogeneity. Using a within-subject analysis, we investigate whether second-movers have a tendency to be reciprocal (i.e., they return to first movers at...