Electronic reputation or feedback mechanisms aim to mitigate the moral hazard problems associated with exchange among strangers by providing the type of information available in more traditional close-knit groups, where members are frequently involved in one another's dealings. In this paper, we...

The amount of institutional intervention necessary to secure efficiency-enhancing cooperation in markets and organizations, in circumstances where interactions take place among essentially strangers, depends critically on the amount of information informal reputation mechanisms need transmit....

We observe that information externalities arise in sequential equilibrium of the chain store game such that the amount of reputation building among partners differs from that among strangers. No matching effects are predicted for the trust game. Our experiment confirms the qualitative chain...

Electronic reputation or "feedback" mechanisms aim to mitigate the moral hazard problems associated with exchange among strangers by providing the type of information available in more traditional close-knit groups, where members are frequently involved in one another's dealings. In this paper,...

Many Internet markets rely on ‘feedback systems’, essentially social networks of reputation, to facilitate trust and trustworthiness in anonymous transactions. Market competition creates incentives that arguably may enhance or curb the effectiveness of these systems. We investigate how...

Reciprocal feedback distorts the production and content of reputation information, hampering trust and trade efficiency. Data from eBay and other sources combined with laboratory data provide a robust picture of how reciprocity can be guided by changes in the way feedback information flows...

We conducted a controlled field experiment on eBay and examined to what extent both social and competitive laboratory behavior is robust to institutionally complex real world markets with experienced traders, who selected themselves into these markets. EBay’s natural trading system provides...

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Laboratory market experiments observe a sharp dichotomy between (selfish) competitive behavior and fair-minded social behavior depending on competitive conditions. While the dichotomy is consistent with social preference theory, the often advanced hypothesis that social behavior is an artifact...

Economic engineering is the science of designing real-world institutions and mechanisms that align individual incentives and behavior with the underlying goals. This paper discusses why behavioral economic engineering is a promising research field, how behavioral phenomena may affect economic...