Behaviour in public good experiments is usually attributed partly to rational self-interest and partly to social norms and preferences. This paper examines if sensitivity to social desirability affects public good contribution and in what way. A pre-experimental measure of social desirability...

Do the insights into human behavior generated by laboratory experiments hold outside the lab? This is the crucial question of external validity that naturally troubles both experimentalists and their critics. We address this question by adopting Popper's injunction that hypotheses should be...

There is considerable debate about the alternative economic approaches to merger control taken by competition authorities. However, differences in economic analysis are not the only reason for alternative decisions. We conduct an experiment in decision making in the context of merger appraisal,...

This note paper has been prepared for inclusion as a book chapter in a forthcoming Handbook on the Economics of Philanthropy, Reciprocity and Social Enterprise edited by Luigino Bruni and Stefano Zamagni and to be published by Edward Elgar.

Vendettas occur in many real world settings where rivals compete for a prize, e.g., winning an election or a competitive promotion, by engaging in retaliatory aggressive behavior. We present a benchmark experiment where two players have an initial probability of winning a prize. Retaliatory...

We present a macroeconomic market experiment to isolate the impact of monetary shocks on the exchange rate, as an alternative to SVAR identification. In a non-stochastic treatment, covered interest rate parity holds and predicted exchange rates are tracked well. In a stochastic treatment, we...

Three experiments on utility interdependence are discussed. Subjects receive money by betting and possibly by arbitrary assignments. They can then pay to reduce and, possibly, redistribute the steal money; in one case, only the decisions of a randomly determined dictator are implemented. The...

This paper presents the results of an experiment where people can reduce (`burn`) other subjects` money at a cost to their own, with the decisions of one of them (randomly chosen after all decisions are made) getting implemented to determine final winnings. Almost 50% of the subjects engage in...

A positive correlation between relative position and the neurotransmitter serotonin exists in non-human primates, within an optimal range. This paper explores the reasons of this correlation. The main function of serotonin appears cognitive: it determines how optimally agents perceive and behave...

The conjunction fallacy occurs whenever probability compounds are thought of as more likely than its component probabilities alone. In the experiment we present, subjects chose between simple and compound lotteries after some practice. Depending on the condition, they were given more or less...