We present a costly voting model in which each voter has a private valuation for their preferred outcome of a vote. When there is a zero cost to voting, all voters vote and hence all values are counted equally regardless of how high they may be. By having a cost to voting, only those with high...

Often an organization or government must allocate goods without collecting payment in return. This may pose a difficult problem either when agents receiving those goods have private information in regards to their values or needs or when discriminating among agents using known differences is not...

We examine an environment with n voters each with a private value over two alternatives. We compare the social surplus of two mechanisms for deciding between them: majority voting and shouting. In majority voting, the choice with the most votes wins. With shouting, the voter who shouts the...

Sometimes cooperation between two parties requires exactly one to cede to the other. If the decisions whether to cede are made simultaneously, then neither or both may acquiesce leading to an inefficient outcome. However, inefficiency may be avoided if a party can wait to see what the other...

To understand the mechanisms behind bank run contagions, we conduct bank run experiments in a modified Diamond–Dybvig setup with two banks (Left and Right). The banks׳ liquidity levels are either linked or independent. Left Bank depositors see their bank׳s liquidity level before deciding....

Most previous experiments attempting to establish the existence of the self-serving bias have confounded it with strategic behavior. We design an experiment that controls for strategic behavior (Haman effects) and isolates the bias itself. The self-serving bias that we measure concerns beliefs...