We experimentally investigate the effect of cheap talk in a bargaining game with one-sided asymmetric information. A seller has private information about his or her skill and is provided an opportunity to communicate this information to a buyer through a written message. Four different...

Failure to express minority views may distort the behavior of company boards, committees, juries, and other decision-making bodies. Devising a new experimental procedure to measure such conformity in a judgment task, we compare the degree of conformity in groups with varying gender composition....

Guilt averse individuals experience a utility loss if they believe they let someone down. In particular, generosity depends on what the donor believes that the recipient expects to receive. In experimental work, several authors have identified a positive correlation between such second-order...

Casual observation suggests that people are more generous with their time than with their money. In this paper we present experimental evidence supporting the hypothesis. A third of our subjects demand no compensation for non-monetary investments, whereas almost all subjects demand compensation...

We develop a simple model of generous behavior. It is based on the premise that some people are generous, but everyone wants to appear generous. Although non-monetary donations are always inefficient, our model predicts donors to favor non-monetary donations when the inefficiency is relatively...

In a laboratory experiment, we create relationships between pairs of anonymous subjects through a Prisoners' dilemma game. Thereafter the same subjects play a private values (sealed-bid double auction) bargaining game with or without communication. Communication substantially increases...

A distinctive feature of humans compared to other species is the high rate of cooperation with non-kin. One explanation is that humans are motivated by concerns for social esteem. In this paper we experimentally investigate the impact of anticipated verbal feedback on altruistic behavior. We...

Many previous experiments document that behavior in multi-person settings responds to the name of the game and the labeling of strategies. Usually these studies cannot tell whether frames affect preferences or beliefs. In this Dictator game study, we investigate whether social framing effects...

We develop a formal model of social duties. Duties to respect entitlements (duties of justice) differ from duties to promote well-being (duties of charity). A situationspecific version of our model takes entitlements as primitives. A fully portable version derives entitlements from situational...

Can two negotiators fail to agree when both the size of the surplus and the rationality of 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...