We create an environment in which congestion forces agents to match inefficiently early. We then introduce one of two centralized clearinghouse mechanisms. One of these has been successfully used to halt this kind of unraveling in a number of labor markets, while the other has failed. When it is...

This paper reports an experiment involving two mechanisms that allocate a single unit of an indivisible private good among two players, at no cost to either of them. Both mechanisms, proposed by Moore (1992) and Perry and Reny (1999), are compared in terms of their relative performance to assign...

We experimentally investigate the Jackson and Moselle (2002) model where legislators bargain over policy proposals and the allocation of private goods. Key comparative static predictions of the model hold with the introduction of private goods, including "strange bedfellow" coalitions. Private...

Recent studies suggest that payoffs in cents, compared to dollars, produce less defection in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma game. We are unable to replicate these findings with conventional economic procedures or in a direct replication.

Subjects update prior information simultaneously versus sequentially. The mean prediction is remarkably close to the correct Bayesian estimate with simultaneous information, but differs significantly conditional on whether good news precedes bad news or vice versa.

We experimentally investigate a legislative bargaining model with both public and particularistic goods. Consistent with the qualitative implications of the model: There is near exclusive public good provision in the pure public good region, in the pure private good region minimum winning...

Super-experienced bidders have learned to overcome the winner's curse but still earn less than 50% of Nash equilibrium profits. Subjects deviate from the complicated Nash strategy, employing piece-wise-linear bid functions that are capable, in principle, of generating an equilibrium with average...

Bidding is studied in first-price common value auctions where an insider is better informed than other bidders (outsiders). As in symmetric information structure (SIS) auctions, inexperienced outsiders suffer from a strong winner's curse. Super-experienced bidders, who have largely overcome the...