The notion of choice inconsistency is widely spread in the literature on behavioraleconomics. Several approaches were used to account for the observation that peoplereverse their choices over time. This paper aims to explain the formation of resolutionsregarded as internal self-binding devices....

Costly signaling of commitment to a group has been proposed as an explanation forparticipation in religion and ritual. But if the signal’s cost is too small, freeriders willsend the signal and behave selfishly later. Effective signaling may then be prohibitivelycostly. If the average level of...

This paper provides a new way to identify conditional cooperationin a real-time version of the standard voluntary contribution mechanism. Ourapproach avoids most drawbacks of the traditional procedures because it relieson endogenous cycle lengths, which are defined by the number of contributors...

During the last three decades the ascent of behavioral economics clearly helped tobring down artificial disciplinary boundaries between psychology and economics.Noting that behavioral economics seems still under the spell of the rational choicetradition – and, indirectly, of behaviorism – we...

Which inequalities among individuals are considered unjust? This paper reportsthe results of an experiment designed to study distributive choices dealing with arbitrarilyunequal initial endowments. In a three-person distribution problem wheresubjects either know or do not know their endowments,...

This paper examines the occurrence and fragility of information cascades in laboratory experiments.One group of low informed subjects make predictions in sequence. In a matchedpairs design, another set of high informed subjects observe the decisions of the first group andmake predictions....

Economic theory has evolved without paying proper attention to behavioral approaches,especially to social, economic, and cognitive psychology. This has recently changed byincluding behavioral economics courses in many doctoral study programs. Although thisnew development is most welcome, the...

The Shapley value of a cooperative transferable utility game distributes the dividendof each coalition in the game equally among its members. Given exogenous weightsfor all players, the corresponding weighted Shapley value distributes the dividendsproportionally to their weights. In this...

This paper studies the response times of experimental subjects playingthe Ultimatum game in a laboratory setting using monetary incentives.We find that proposals are not significantly correlated with responsetime, whereas responders’ behavior is positively and significantlycorrelated. Hence,...

Does geographic distance or the perceived social distance between subjects significantlyaffect proposer and responder behavior in ultimatum bargaining? To answer this question,subjects play a one-shot ultimatum game with three players (proposer, responder, and apassive dummy player) and...