We study the impact of status and social recognition on worker performance in a field experiment. In collaboration with an international non-governmental organization we hired students to work on a database project. Students in the award treatment were offered a congratulatory card from the...

We present an economic experiment on network formation, in which subjects can decide to form links to one another. Direct links are costly but being connected is valuable. The game-theoretic basis for our experiment is the model of Bala and Goyal (2000). They distinguish between two scenarios...

We present an economic experiment on network formation, in which subjects can decide to form links to one another. Direct links are costly but being connected is valuable. The gametheoretic basis for our experiment is the model of Bala and Goyal (2000). They distinguish between two scenarios...

We show experimentally that a principal’s distrust in the voluntary performance of an agent has a negative impact on the agent’s motivation to perform well. Before the agent chooses his performance, the principal in our experiment decides whether he wants to restrict the agents’ choice set...

Centralized sanctioning institutions are of utmost importance for overcoming free-riding tendencies and enforcing outcomes that maximize group welfare in social dilemma situations. However, little is known about how such institutions come into existence. In this paper we investigate, both...

We investigate a competitive labor market with team production. Workers differ in their motivation to exert team effort, and types are private information. We show that there can exist a separating equilibrium in which workers self-select into different firms and firms employing cooperative...

In this paper we take up a model of Okada (1996) to describe the possibility of collective cooperation in a n-person Prisoner's Dilemma game by means of institutional arrangements. In addition, we introduce the possibility to corrupt the institutional authority by paying him some positive...

This discussion paper has resulted in the publication (2007) 'Order without law? Experimental evidence on voluntary cooperation and sanctioning', 2007, <I>KritV - Kritische Vierteljahresschrift fur Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft</I>, 90, 1-2, 140-155.In this paper we discuss experimental evidence...</i>