Fairness is a strong concern as shown by dictator and ultimatum experiments. Efficiency, measured by the sum of individual payoffs, is a potentially competing concern in games such as the prisoners' dilemma. In our experiment participants can increase efficiency by gift giving. In the one-sided...

Are commonly known beliefs essential for bidding behavior in asymmetric auctions? Our experimental results suggest that not informing participants how values are randomly generated does not change behavior much and may even make it appear more rational.

We report on a research program that employs the indirect evolutionary approach to analyze how the institutional environment drive the evolution of trust and trustworthiness through the evolution of moral preferences, and how in turn the evolution of preferences shapes the evolution of the...

Evolutionary game theory is often used to analyze the evolution of moral preferences. A few studies also examine the co-evolution of preferences and an institutional aspect of the environment. Allowing the adaption of just one institutional aspect such as litigation or legal insurance to...

Applying an indirect evolutionary approach with endogenous preference formation, we show that a legal system can induce players to reward trust even if material incentives dictate to exploit trust. By analyzing the crowding out or crowding in of trustworthiness implied by various verdict rules,...