Peer-to-peer sanctions increase cooperation in multi-person social dilemmas (Fehr & Gachter (2000)), but not when subjects have the option to retaliate (Nikiforakis (2008)). One-shot peer-to-peer rewards have been found to enhance efficiency too (Vyrastekova & van Soest (2008), Rand et al....

Standard theoretical prediction is that rational economic agents participating in rent-seeking contests should engage in socially inefficient behavior by exerting costly efforts. Experimental studies find that the actual efforts of participants are significantly higher than predicted and that...

The standard theoretical description of rent-seeking contests is that of rational individuals or groups engaging in socially inefficient behavior by exerting costly effort. Experimental studies find that the actual efforts of participants are significantly higher than predicted in the models...

We provide an overview of experimental literature on contests and point out the two main phenomena observed in most contest experiments: (i) overbidding relative to the standard Nash equilibrium prediction and (ii) heterogeneous behavior of ex-ante symmetric contestants. Based on the sample of...

A contest is a situation in which individuals or groups expend costly resources while competing to win a specific prize. The variety of economic situations that can be described as contests has attracted enormous attention from economic theorists. Despite the extensive theoretical research of...

Institutions are usually defined as rules of the game. But if rules are dead letters without being enforced, then what is the role of destructive power in the genesis of institutions? This is the first question which will be addressed in the present paper. While the importance of incremental or...

In this paper we incorporate interdisciplinary New Institutional and Transaction Costs Economics (combining Economics, Organization, Law, Sociology, Behavioral and Political Sciences), and suggest a framework for analysis of mechanisms of governance of agro-ecosystem services. Firstly, we...

We investigate the possible explanations of variations in aggregate levels of participation in large-scale political demonstrations. A simple public choice inspired model is applied to data derived from the annual May Day demonstrations of the Danish labour movement and socialist parties taking...

This paper reports 5 laboratory sessions that analyze the effects of group sizes in the voluntary contribution mechanism, when contribution level is either complementary or substitute. The theorical argument is that each production function provides different incentives for the agent along scale...

We experiment a new mechanism for the provision of a discrete public good: in a fixed period individuals can contribute several times; at any moment they can see the total amount collected; at the end of the period, the public good is provided if the amount covers the cost. We find that the...