Theoretically and experimentally, we generalize the analysis of acquiringa company (Samuelson and Bazerman 1985) by allowing for competition ofboth, buyers and sellers. Naivety of both is related to the idea that higherprices exclude worse qualities. While competition of naive buyers...

Economic theory has evolved without paying proper attention to behavioral approaches,especially to social, economic, and cognitive psychology. This has recently changed byincluding behavioral economics courses in many doctoral study programs. Although thisnew development is most welcome, the...

Using a symmetric 2-person prisoners’ dilemma as the base game, each playerreceives a signal for the number of rounds to be played with the same partner.The actual number of rounds (the length of the supergame) is determined bythe maximal signal where each player expects the other’s signal...

We report on an experiment designed to explore whether allowing individualsto voice their anger prevents costly punishment. For this sake, weuse an ultimatum minigame and distinguish two treatments: one in whichresponders can only accept or reject the o®er, and the other in which theycan also...

When two or more agents compete for a bonus and the agents' productivity in each of several possible occurrences depends stochastically on (constant) effort, the number of times that are checked to assign the bonus affects the level of un-certainty in the selection process. Uncertainty, in turn,...

Facing a stochastic market wage, which is independent of their own hiring policy, employersoffer contracts specifying fixed wage, revenue share and employment duration.In ongoing employment relations it depends on the treatment whether fixed wages canbe only increased or also decreased. Will the...

In a market with stochastic demand at most one seller can acquire costly informationabout demand. Other sellers entertain idiosyncratic beliefs about the marketdemand and the probability that an informed seller is trading in the market. Theseidiosyncratic beliefs co-evolve with the potential...

Contrary to the models of deterministic life cycle saving, we take itfor granted that uncertainty of one's future is the essential problem ofsaving decisions. However, unlike the stochastic life cycle models, we capturethis crucial uncertainty by a non-Bayesian scenario-based...

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...

Can one define and test the hypothesis of (un)bounded rationality instochastic choice tasks without endorsing Bayesianism? Similar to the state specificity of assets, we rely on state-specific goal formation. In a given choice task, the list of state-specific goal levels is optimal if one cannot...