Volunteering is a widespread allocation mechanism in the workplace. It emerges naturally in software development or the generation of online knowledge platforms. Using a field experiment with more than 2000 workers, we study the effect of team size on volunteering in an online labor market. In...

Volunteering is a widespread allocation mechanism at the workplace and emerges naturally in open-source software development, the generation of online knowledge platforms, and to some extent in "agile" work environments. Using a field experiment with 8 treatments and close to 2,800 workers on an...

There is ample evidence that the number of players can have an important impact on the cooperation and coordination behavior of people facing social dilemmas. With extremely few exceptions, the literature on cooperation assumes common knowledge about who is a player and how many players are...

This paper investigates the collusive and competitive effects of algorithmic price recommendations on market outcomes. These recommendations are often non-binding and common in many markets, especially on online platforms. We develop a theoretical framework and derive two algorithms that...

While many companies use algorithms to optimize their pricing, additional human oversight and price interventions are widespread. Human intervention can correct algorithmic flaws and introduce private information into the pricing process, but it may also be based on less sophisticated pricing...

Algorithms play an increasingly important role in economic situations. These situations are often strategic, where the artificial intelligence may or may not be cooperative. We study the deter-minants and forms of algorithmic cooperation in the infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma. We run a...

As self-learning pricing algorithms become popular, there are growing concerns among academics and regulators that algorithms could learn to collude tacitly on non-competitive prices and thereby harm competition. I study popular reinforcement learning algorithms and show that they develop...

We study the propensity of independent algorithms to collude in repeated Cournot duopoly games. Specifically, we investigate the predictive power of different oligopoly and bargaining solutions regarding the effect of asymmetry between firms. We find that both consumers and firms can benefit...

Policymakers have been discussing various potential measures to cushion the impact of skyrocketing gas prices and prevent supply shortages. On 10 October 2022 an expert commission in Germany proposed a plan to keep natural gas affordable while also preventing shortages. The main element of the...