Recent studies suggest that payoffs in cents, compared to dollars, produce less defection in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma game. We are unable to replicate these findings with conventional economic procedures or in a direct replication.

We experimentally study clock auctions to dissolve partnerships jointly owned by two players. Subjects are found to deviate systematically from the Nash equilibrium. We explain the bidding behaviour in terms of risk aversion and/or non-standard utility theory.

Some problems are more easily solved if context is provided. A stylized result from beauty contest experiments is that most choices are consistent with level-1 or level-2 thinking rather than the Nash equilibrium. The beauty contest experiment reported in this paper includes treatments in which...

We introduce a competitive framing in the mini-ultimatum game utilizing chess puzzles. Therein, our chess playing participants accept low offers significantly more often compared to a neutral framing. We conclude that in familiar competitive surroundings egoistic behavior is more acceptable.

In a Bertrand-oligopoly experiment, firms choose whether or not to engage in cartel-like communication and, if so, they may get fined by a cartel authority. We find that the four-firm industries form cartels more often than the duopolies because they gain less from a hysteresis effect after...

“Overbidding” with respect to risk-neutral Nash predictions in first-price auction experiments has been consistently reported in the literature. One possible explanation for overbidding is that participants in these experiments do not have a clear perception of probabilities, which causes...

This paper investigates how compensation structure affects performance in a simple but effort-consuming task. In this experimental study, the subjects were asked to multiply two-digit numbers for 40 min and were paid using either a linear (with different pay for performance sensitivities) or a...

We analyse bonus payments for officials, who transfer payments truthfully to the government rather than collecting bribes. We show that optimised bonus payments are always beneficial to the government, making them a more effective anti-corruption measure than simple wage increases.

Researchers use practice rounds to familiarize participants with experimental auction mechanisms. We find a positive correlation between practice bids and bids submitted in later rounds. We consider three explanations for this correlation: a behavioral anchoring effect, a tendency for some...

Since Thaler (1981), we have lived with the uncomfortable stylized fact that many humans choose strictly dominated actions in intertemporal choice experiments. We designed an experiment to probe the reasons for the apparently suboptimal behavior, and we find that the classic Fisher (1930)...