Rights of first refusal are contract clauses intended to provide the holder of a license or lease with some protection when the contract ends. The simplest version gives the right holder the ability to act after potential competitors. However, another common implementation requires the right...

We investigate the impact of reputation in a laboratory experiment. We do so by varying whether the past choices of a long-run player are observable by the short-run players. Our framework allows for reputation to have either a beneficial or a harmful effect on the long-run player. We find that...

Some current utility models presume that people are concerned with their relative standing in a reference group. If this is true, do certain types care more about this than others? Using simple binary decisions and self-reported happiness, we investigate both the prevalence of “difference...

Costless and non-binding pre-play communication (cheap talk) has been found to often be effective in achieving efficient outcomes in experimental games. However, in previous two-player experimental games each player was informed about both his payoff and the action of the other player in the...

Costless and non-binding pre-play communication (cheap talk) has been found to often be effective in achieving efficient outcomes in experimental games. However, in previous two-player experimental games each player was informed about both his payoff and the action of the other player in the...

Are people concerned with their relative standing in a reference group? Do certain types care more about this than others? Little work has been done to identify underlying determinants for an inclination to make social comparisons and to explain variation across individuals. We investigate...