We present a field experiment to assess the effect of own and peer wage variations on actual work effort of employees with hourly wages. Work effort neither reacts to an increase of the own wage, nor to a positive or negative peer comparison. This result seems at odds with numerous laboratory...

We report on a two-person bargaining experiment, where both players were represented by groups of three persons each. The discussions within the groups were recorded on video tapes and have been transcribed into text protocols. Analyzing the final payoffs and proposals we got several results...

This paper experimentally explores group decision-making in a two-player power-to-take game. Discussions preceding group decisions are video taped and analyzed. Each subject first earns an income in an individual effort task preceding the game. The game consists of two stages. First, one group...

When using the strategy method in ultimatum bargaining, many researchers ask responders for the minimal acceptable offer only implicitly assuming strategies to be monotone. Recent research has shown, however, that subjects decline disadvantageous and advantageous proposals. We report on an...

Experimentally observed deviations of behavior from game theoretic predictions suggest that fairness does influence decision making. Fairness in the sense of equality has become an essential element of economic models aiming at explaining actual behavior (cf. Fehr and Schmidt, 1999; Bolton and...

Numerous laboratory experiments show that workers reciprocate to high wages with high effort, when there is perfect information on the surplus created. Recent field experiments, however, suggest that trust and reciprocity may be lower or absent when the information is incomplete. We report a...

We analyze how physicians, medical students, and non-medical students respond to nancial incentives from fee-for-service and capitation. We employ a series of artefactual eld and conventional lab experiments framed in a physician decision-making context. Physicians, participating in the eld, and...

Quality improvements in markets for medical care are key objectives in any Health reform. An important question is whether disclosing physicians’ performance can contribute to achieving these goals. Due to the asymmetric information inherent in medical markets, one may argue that changes in...

Mixed payment systems have become a prominent alternative to paying physicians through fee-for-service and capitation. While theory shows mixed payment systems to be superior, empirically, causal effects on physicians’ behavior are not well understood when introducing mixed systems. We...

Pay-for-performance schemes targeting quality improvements and cost reductions in markets for medical care have become increasingly popular among health policy- makers during the last decade. Typically, such schemes attach financial incentives to a set of indicators which consist of some...