We run an experiment with users of internet message boards. We find that forum users cooperate more with partners of their own forum than with partners from a different forum but they are equally altruistic when they made a gift to a partner of their forum or from another one. We also find that...

We report experimental evidence on gender differences in financial decision that involves three depositors choosing between waiting or withdrawing their money from a common bank. We find that the position in the line, the fact of being observed and the observed decisions are key determinants to...

A distinctive feature of recent revolutions was the key role of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). In a simple model we assume that while social media allow to observe all previous decisions, mass media only give aggregate information about the state of a revolt. We show, first,...

We study a coordination problem where agents act sequentially. Agents are embedded in an observation network that allows them to observe the actions of their neighbors. We find that coordination failures do not occur if there exists a sufficiently large clique. Its existence is necessary and...

Nuestro punto de partida es que la economía española cuenta con un sistema impositivo muy ineficiente que no es capaz de recaudar suficientes recursos para financiar nuestro Estado de Bienestar. En concreto, estimamos que el déficit estructural está en torno al 3%. El objetivo de este...

Since the onset of the sovereign debt crisis, the crisis-stricken countries in Europe have been pushed to take drastic steps to consolidate their finances and reduce their budget deficits. Despite strong public opposition and largely damaging short-run effects, the countries have undertaken many...

We assess the impact of cognitive abilities on withdrawal decisions in a bank-run game. In our setup, depositors choose sequentially between withdrawing or keeping their funds deposited in a common bank. They may observe previous decisions depending on the information structure. Theoretically,...

We report experimental evidence on the effect of observability of actions on bank runs. We model depositors’ decision-making in a sequential framework, with three depositors located at the nodes of a network. Depositors observe the other depositors’ actions only if connected by the network....

There has been a wide-spread misconception based on the imprecise wording of Art. 52 of the European Patent Convention (EPC) that the protection of business methods by patents is prohibited in Europe. This paper investigates the legal framework set by patent laws with respect to the...