Most research in economics models agents somehow motivated by out-comes. Here, we model agents motivated by procedures instead, whereprocedures are dened independently of an outcome. To that end, wedesign procedures which yield the same expected outcomes or carry thesame information on other's...

We exploit a controlled frameless laboratory experiment to study settlement negoti-ations and the plainti¤’s decision to raise a lawsuit in case of an impasse. We …nd thatgreater variance in court outcomes increases the litigation rate and lowers the settlementrate. This latter …nding goes...

The existing literature acknowledges that a mismatch between the experimenter'sand the subjects' models of an experimental task can adversely aect the interpretation ofdata from laboratory experiments. We discuss why the two common experimental designs(between-subjects and within-subjects) used...

Recent literature has questioned the existence of a learning foundationfor the partially cursed equilibrium. This paper closes the gap by showingthat a partially cursed equilibrium corresponds to a particular analogy-based expectation equilibrium.

In line with the widely applied principle of just deserts, we assume that the severityof the penalty on a contract offender increases in the harm on the other. Whenthis principle holds, the influence of the efficiency of the agreement on the incentivesto abide by it crucially depends on whether...

Can two negotiators fail to agree when both the size of the surplus and the rationalityof the negotiators are common knowledge? We show that the answer is affirmative.When the negotiators can make irrevocable commitments at a low but positive cost,the unique symmetric equilibrium entails...

We consider guilt averse agents and principals and study the effects ofguilt on optimal behavior of the principal and the agent in a moral hazardmodel.The principal’s contract proposal contains a target effort in addition tothe monetary incentive scheme. By accepting the agreement, the...

Experiments suggest that communication increases the contribution topublic goods (Ledyard, 1995). There is also evidence that, when contemplatinga lie, people trade off their private benefit from the lie with theharm it inflicts on others (Gneezy, 2005). We develop a model of bilateralpre-play...

We present an experimental test of a shirking model where monitoring intensityis endogenous and effort a continuous variable. Wage level, monitoring intensityand consequently the desired enforceable effort level are jointly determined bythe maximization problem of the firm. As a result,...