We carry out two experiments to test a model of herd behaviour based on the work of Banerjee (Quarterly Journal of Economics, CVII, 797–817, 1992). He shows that herding occurs as a result of people observing the actions of others and using this information in their own decision rule. In...

Berg et al. (Games and Economic Behavior, 10, pp. 122–142, 1995) study trust and reciprocity in an investment setting. They find significant amounts of trust and reciprocity and conclude that trust is a guiding behavioral instinct (a “primitive†in their terminology). We modify...

One important determinant of voluntary contributions to public goods is the value of the public good relative to that of the forgone private good. Isaac, Walker and Thomas (1984) formalized this relation in the Marginal Per Capita Return (MPCR) and demonstrated its influence on the provision of...

We present an experiment on the false consensus effect. Unlike previous experiments, we provide monetary incentives for revealing the actual estimation of others' behavior. In each session and round, sixteen subjects make a choice between two options simultaneously. Then they estimate the...

We investigate, in an experimental setting, the effect of private information on the Coase theorem's predictions of efficiency and allocative neutrality. For a two-person bargaining game, we find significantly more inefficiency and allocative bias in the case of private information compared with...

Truthful revelation is a dominant strategy in both English (oral ascending bid) and second-price sealed-bid private-values auctions. Controlled observations of English auctions are largely consistent with the dominant strategy prediction, but laboratory second-price auctions exhibit substantial...