Participants in experimental games typically can only choose actions, without making comments about other participants' future actions. In sequential two-person games, we allow first movers to express a preference between responder choices. We find that responder behavior differs substantially...

The issue of one's identity has loomed large recently and has unfortunately been used more and more as a wedge to separate subgroups. It is important to understand the ramifications of identity, both to limit the negative consequences (such as so-called identity politics) and to be able to use...

One’s social identity tends to lead one to favor those belonging to one’s group; this ingroup bias may lead to problematic relationships. At the same time, communication has been found to have beneficial social consequences in controlled laboratory experiments. An important question is...

While group identity can generate in-group bias, the topic of how activities can generate group affiliation is still largely unexplored. We experimentally study the effect of shared experience on group affiliation, varying shared experiences by paying subjects differently for the same task....

We examine experimentally the impact of communication on trust and cooperation. Our design admits observation of promises, lies, and beliefs. The evidence is consistent with people striving to live up to others' expectations in order to avoid guilt, as can be modeled using psychological game...

This chapter surveys the contributions of laboratory experiments to labor economics. We begin with a discussion of methodological issues: when (and why) is a lab experiment the best approach; how do laboratory experiments compare to field experiments; and what are the main design issues? We then...

We study worker behavior in an efficiency-wage environment where co-workers' wages can influence a worker's effort. Theoretically, we show that an increase in workers' responsiveness to co-workers' wages should lead profit-maximizing firms to compress wages. Our laboratory experiments, on the...

The Dixit (1980) hypothesis that incumbents use investment in capacity to deter potential entrants has found little empirical support. Bagwell and Ramey (1996) propose a model where, in the unique game-theoretic prediction based on forward induction or iterated elimination of weakly-dominated...

Papers such as Akerlof and Yellen (1990) and Rabin (1993) argue that considerations such as fairness and reciprocity are important in individual decision-making. The gift-exchange game (Fehr, Kirchsteiger & Reidl, 1993, and many others) has established that, in the laboratory, higher wages...

We explore the effects of social distance in experiments conducted over the Internet on three continents, in classroom laboratory sessions conducted in Israel and Spain, and in computer sessions pairing participants from different states-one in Texas and the other in California. Our design...