Norms play an important role in establishing social order. Thecurrent literature focuses on the emergence, maintenance and impactof norms with regard to coordination and cooperation. However, theissue of norm-related conict deserves more attention. We develop ageneral theory of \normative...

We study ultimatum and dictator experiments where the first moverchooses the amount of money to be distributed between the playerswithin a given interval, knowing that her own share is fixed. Thus, thefirst mover is faced with scarcity, but not with the typical trade-off betweenher own and the...

The measurement of social norms plays a pivotal role in many social sciences.While economists predominantly conduct experiments, sociologistsrather employ (factorial) surveys. Both methods, however, suer from distinctweaknesses. Experiments, on the one hand, often fall short in themeasurement of...

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...

This paper revisits and extends the experiment on the solidarity gameby Selten and Ockenfels (1998). We replicate the basic design of the solidaritygame and extend it in order to test the robustness of the fixed totalsacrifice' effect and the applied strategy method. Our results only...