We study communication in a two-player coordination game with Pareto-ranked equilibria. Prior research demonstrates that efficient coordination is difficult without communication but obtains regularly with (mandatory) costless pre-play messages. In a laboratory experiment, we modify...

This comprehensive and groundbreaking Handbook integrates economic and organization theories to help elucidate the design and evolution of economic organization. Economic organization is regarded both as a subject of inquiry and as an emerging disciplinary field in its own right, integrating...

Prior research demonstrates a willingness to incur costs to punish norm violators. But, how strong are the motives underlying such acts? Will people rely on "excuses" to avoid acting on costly punishment intentions, as with other costly pro-social acts? In a laboratory experiment, we find that...

Slowing climate change will almost certainly require a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but agreement on who should reduce emissions by how much is difficult, in part because of the self-serving bias---the tendency to believe that what is beneficial to oneself is also fair. Conducting...

We explore bargaining, using ultimatum games, when one party, the proposer, possesses private information about the pie size and can either misrepresent this information through untruthful statements (explicit deception) or through information-revealing actions (implicit deception). Our study is...

This paper proposes a learning-efficiency explanation of modular structure in language. An optimal grammar arises as the solution to the problem of learning a language from a minimal number of observations of instances of the use of the language. Agents face symmetry constraints that limit their...

This paper looks at simple games with one round of pre-play communication followed by a simultaneous move, complete information game. In these games the {\em curb} concept distinguishes among efficient equilibria according to their risk. The paper contains two major results. First, if only one...