Economists usually treat human behavior as being determined by the shadow of the future, while most other social scientists point to the shadow of the past. This paper considers experimental evidence relevant to the controversy and tries to reconcile both explanations of human behavior with each...

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...

In our experiment subjects first answer a personality questionnaire. They then take part in a 3-person game. In the game one player chooses between two possibilities. The first is an outside option which assigns a positive amount to that player, but leaves the two others empty-handed. The second...

In a large scale newspaper experiment 5,132 readers of the German weekly, Die Zeit, participated in a three-person bargaining game. In our data analysis we focus on (1) the influence of age, gender, profession and the medium chosen for participation on bargaining behavior and on (2) the external...

We examine the strategic behavior of leaders and followers in sequential duopoly experimentsin which followers either perfectly observe the leaders’ actions or else observe nothing. Ourexperiments show that consistent with the theory, leaders enjoy a greater first-mover advantagewhen followers...

We report on a research program that employs the indirect evolutionary approach to analyze how the institutional environment drive the evolution of trust and trustworthiness through the evolution of moral preferences, and how in turn the evolution of preferences shapes the evolution of the...

In the experiment two bureaucrats independently can grant a permitwith the profit of the private party depending on when the permit is given.Whereas one bureaucrat can only veto the project, the second one hasadditional discretion in granting the permit earlier or later. We speakof greasing when...

Threat power is the ability to impose a great loss on someone else at relativelylow own cost and can be measured by the ratio of other’s and own loss. It can bevaried by assuming that rejecting an ultimatum reduces the payoff of the proposerto its lambda–share and that of the responder to...

We investigate the intertemporal and interpersonal allocation behavior ofspouses with different deterministic life expectations in an experiment. In eachperiod of their life both partners propose a consumption level one of which isthen randomly implemented. In spite of the complex dynamics...

Similar to Levati and Neugebauer (2001), a clock is used by which participantscan vary their individual contributions for voluntarily providing apublic good. As time goes by, participants either in(de)crease their contributiongradually or keep it constant. Groups of two poorly and two...