Participants in a public goods experiment receive private or common signals regarding the so-called 'point of no return', meaning that if the groupÕs total contribution falls below this point, all payoffs are reduced. An individual faces the usual conflict between private and collective...

Property rights theory suggests that vertical integration is a sensible solution to hold-up problems and therefore improves social welfare. Theories of reciprocity, in contrast, suggest that vertical integration can reduce social welfare if it implies an unfair distribution. Translating the...

This paper presents experimental evidence that contributions to a public good can be path-dependent for a limited time span. We study a repeated linear public-good game with punishment opportunities. Our data shows that subjects who had experienced a higher marginal return on public-good...

This paper presents experimental evidence that tax compliance is path dependent. We show that individuals faced with the same current tax enforcement parameters, will nevertheless choose different compliance if they have faced different tax enforcement parameters in the past. This finding has...

We investigate the role of incentives set by a parent firm for competition among its subsidiaries. In a Cournot experiment four subsidiaries of the same parent operate in the same market. Parents earn a specific share of the joint profit and can choose how to distribute the remaining surplus (or...

This paper tests two basic assumptions underlying court made or statutory provisions prohibiting predatory pricing. Such prohibitions are usually based on the economic grounds that monopolistic pricing is likely to occur in the long run, causing harm to competition and consumers. The first...