A budget-constrained buyer wants to purchase items from a shortlisted set. Items are differentiated by observable quality and sellers have private reserve prices for their items. The buyer's problem is to select a subset of maximal quality. Money does not enter the buyer's objective function,...

We consider a budget-constrained mechanism designer who selects an optimal set of projects to maximize her utility. Projects may differ in their value for the designer, and their cost is private information. In this allocation problem, the quantity of procured projects is endogenously determined...

Once a new technology has been invented, there is a credible threat of imitationwhen patents are long and imitation cost is low. When imitation is credible, the innovator hasan incentive to postpone technology adoption for relatively high cost of imitation. Thepossibility of licensing eliminates...

I study the welfare optimal allocation of a number of identical and indivisible objects to a set of heterogeneous risk-neutral agents under the hypothesis that money is not available. Agents have independent private values, which represent the maximum time that they are willing to wait in line...

We investigate experimentally whether entry costs have an impact on the evolutionof cooperation in a social dilemma game. In particular, subjects repeatedly playthe so-called takeover game with anonymous partners randomly drawn from a fixedpopulation of participants. The game represents a social...

Experiments suggest that communication increases the contribution topublic goods (Ledyard, 1995). There is also evidence that, when contemplatinga lie, people trade off their private benefit from the lie with theharm it inflicts on others (Gneezy, 2005). We develop a model of bilateralpre-play...

It is commonly accepted that face-to-face communication inducescooperation. The experiment disentangles communication and socialeffect (replication of Roth, 1995) and examines the components of thesocial effect with the help of unilateral communication. Results suggestthat separate processes,...

Systematic experiments with distribution games (for a survey, see Roth, 1995, ) haveshown that participants are strongly motivated by fairness and efficiency considerations.This evidence, however, results mainly from experimental designs asking directly for sharingmonetary rewards. But even when...

To explain potential sources of wage rigidity this article analyzes a model of reciprocalkindness applied to a repeated ultimatum game with changing and nonzeroconflict payoffs. The model is also tested in a laboratory experiment. The resultsare compatible with the rentsharingapproach to wage...

Economic decisions have been shown to depend on actual outcomes as well as perceived intentions. In this paper, we examine wether and how the relative importance of outcomes or intentions for economic decision develops with age. We report the resullt of ultimatum games with children, teens and...