Leadership is important for the well-functioning of organizations. Weexamine the effects of leadership on contributions in public goods experiments.Leadership by example is implemented by letting one groupmember contribute to the public good before followers do. Such leadershipincreases...

The satisficing approach is generalized and applied to finite n-person games.Based on direct elicitation of aspirations, we formally define the conceptof satisficing, which does not exclude (prior-free) optimality but includesit as a border case. We also review some experiments on strategic...

On a heterogeneous experimental oligopoly market, sellers choose a price,specify a set-valued prior-free conjecture about the others' behavior, andform their own profit-aspiration for each element of their conjecture. Weformally define the concepts of satisficing and prior-free optimality...

In a public goods experiment, subjects can vary over a period of stochasticlength two contribution levels: one is publicly observable (their cheap talkstated intention), while the other is not seen by the others (their secretintention). When the period suddenly stops, participants are restricted...

We experimentally examine how group identity affects trust behaviorin an investment game. In one treatment, group identity isinduced purely by minimal groups. In other treatments, group membersare additionally related by outcome interdependence establishedin a prior public goods game. Moving...

In a stochastic duopoly market, sellers must form state-specific aspirationsexpressing how much they want to earn given their expectationsabout the other's behavior. We define individually and mutually satisficingsales behavior for given individual beliefs and aspiration profiles. In afirst...

Standard economic explanations of good conduct in trade rely almostexclusively on future-directed extrinsic motivations induced by materialincentives. But intrinsic motives to behave trustworthy and to punishuntrustworthiness do support trade. In our model, intrinsically motivatedplayers are...

We experimentally investigate whether the satisficing approach isabsorbable, i.e., whether it still applies after participants become awareof it. In a setting where an investor decides between a riskless bondand either one or two risky assets, we familiarize participants with thesatisficing...

Medical doctors act as agents of their patients by either treating them directly orreferring them to other more or differently specialized doctors, who therebybecome “agents of agents”. The main aim of this paper is to model centralaspects of such two-layered agency relations in the medical...

Social institutions regulating group conduct have been regarded as necessaryfor human cooperation to transcend family bonds. However, manystudies in economics and biology indicate that reciprocity based on repeatedinteraction suffices to establish cooperation with non-kin. We shedlight on the...