Donations in-kind can be a mixed blessing for charities, who are often more adept at solicitation than resale. Many organizations rely on raffles to turn donations into cash, but auctions are also common. Theory predicts that all-pay mechanisms should produce more revenue than winner-pay...

We propose the minimum approval mechanism (MAM) for a standard linear public good environment with two players. Players simultaneously and privately choose their contributions to the public good in the first stage. In the second stage, they simultaneously decide whether to approve the otherʼs...

We describe an experimental comparison of the out-of-equilibrium performance of three allocation mechanisms designed to achieve Lindahl outcomes as Nash equilibria: the mechanisms due to Walker (1981), Kim (1993), and Chen (2002). We find that Chenʼs mechanism, which is supermodular, converges...

We investigate the emergence and enforcement of contribution norms to public goods in homogeneous and heterogeneous groups. With survey data we demonstrate that uninvolved individuals hold well defined yet conflicting normative views of fair contribution rules related to efficiency, equality,...

Recent field evidence suggests a positive link between overconfidence and innovative activities. In this paper we argue that the connection between overconfidence and innovation is more complex than the previous literature suggests. In particular, we show theoretically and experimentally that...

We study first- and second-order subjective expectations (beliefs) in strategic decision-making. We elicit probabilistically both first- and second-order beliefs and apply the method to a Hide-and-Seek experiment. We study the relationship between choice and beliefs in terms of whether observed...

We study how the predictive power of level-k models changes as we perturb the classical beauty contest setting along two dimensions: the strength of the coordination motive and the information symmetry. We use a variation of the Morris and Shin (2002) model as the unified framework for our...

In this paper we use a laboratory setting to manipulate our subjectsʼ beliefs about the cognitive levels of the players they are playing against. We show that in the context of the 2/3 guessing game, individual choices crucially depend on their beliefs about the level of others. Hence, a...

We report findings from experiments on two delegation–communication games. An uninformed principal chooses whether to fully delegate her decision-making authority to an informed agent or to retain the authority and communicate with the agent via cheap talk to obtain decision-relevant...

In three experiments we examine the extent to which strategic sophistication (i.e., inductive reasoning, iterative dominance and level-k thinking) is determined by broader cognitive skills. In the first experiment we replicate previous results showing strong associations between cognitive...