Several previous experiments using the minimum effort (weak link) coordination game reveal a striking regularity - large groups never coordinate successfully on the efficient equilibrium. Given the frequency with which large real-world groups, such as firms, face similarly difficult coordination...

We test whether a descriptive norm-nudge is a suitable policy tool to increase cooperation in a social dilemma when decisions are taken by teams, not individuals. 10 Each team in our experiment comes from a different fishing boat at Lake Victoria, Tanzania. The provision of a norm-nudge is...

Industrial organization is mainly concerned with the behavior of large firms. Experimental industrial organization therefore faces a problem: How can firms be brought into the laboratory? The main approach relies on framing: Call individuals firms! This experimental approach is not in line with...

We experimentally study behavior in a simple voting game where players have private information about their preferences. With random matching, subjects overwhelmingly follow the dominant strategy to exaggerate their preferences, which leads to inefficiency. We analyze an exogenous linking...

Free riding and coordination difficulties are held to be the primary causes of cooperation breakdown among nonrelatives. These thwarting effects are particularly severe in the absence of effective monitoring institutions capable of sanctioning deviant behavior. Unfortunately, solutions to global...

Cooperation in prisoner's dilemma games can usually be sustained only if the game has an infinite horizon. We analyze to what extent the theoretically crucial distinction of finite vs. infinite-horizon games is reflected in the outcomes of a prisoner's dilemma experiment. We compare three...

Using data on one-shot games, we investigate the assumption that players respond to underlying expectations about their opponent's behavior. In our laboratory experiments, subjects play a set of 14 two-person 3x3 games, and state first order beliefs about their opponent's behavior. The sets of...

This paper reports experiments that elicit subjects' initial responses to 16 dominancesolvable two-person guessing games. The structure is publicly announced except for varying payoff parameters, to which subjects are given free access, game by game, through an interface that records their...

This paper examines the occurrence and fragility of information cascades in laboratory experiments. One group of low informed subjects make predictions in sequence. In a matched pairs design, another set of high informed subjects observe the decisions of the first group and make predictions....