Economics is often taught at a level of abstraction that can hinder some students from gaining basic intuition. However, lecture and textbook presentations can be complemented with classroom exercises in which students make decisions and interact. The approach can increase interest in, and...

Considerable evidence has accumulated which shows that the choice behavior of individuals exhibits systematic departures from expected utility maximization. The focus of the paper is to develop some measures of the extent to which utility maximization nevertheless remains a useful approximation....

In an experiment comparing two-person bargaining and multiperson markets in Israel, Japan, the United States, and Yugoslavia, market outcomes converged to equilibrium everywhere, with no payoff-relevant differences between countries. Bargaining outcomes were everywhere different from equilibrium...

Laboratory data from bargaining experiments have started a debate about the prospects for various parts of game theory as descriptive theories of observable behavior and about whether, to what extent, and how a successful descriptive theory must take into account peoples' perceptions of...

This paper examines the cross-fertilizations of random utility models with the study of decision making under risk and uncertainty. We start with a description of the Expected Utility (EU) theory and then consider deviations from the standard EU frameworks, involving the Allais paradox and the...

The structural Quantal Response Equilibrium (QRE) generalizes the Nash equilibrium by augmenting payoffs with random elements that are not removed in some limit. This approach has been widely used both as a theoretical framework to study comparative statics of games and as an econometric...

An important feature in the design of an emissions trading program is how emissions allowances are initially distributed into the market. In a competitive market the choice between an auction and free allocation should, according to economic theory, not have any influence on firms’ production...

This paper implements an experimental test of a game-theoretic model of equilibrium profiling. Attackers choose a demographic “type” from which to recruit, and defenders choose which demographic types to search. Some types are more reliable than others in the sense of having a higher...

We use a set of economic experiments to test the effects of some novel features of California's new controls on greenhouse gas emissions. The California cap and trade scheme imposes limits on allowance ownership, uses a tiered price containment reserve sale, and settles allowance auctions based...