We conduct a laboratory experiment to explore whether the protection of intellectual property (IP) incentivizes people to create non-rivalrous knowledge goods, foregoing the production of other rivalrous goods. In the contrasting treatment with no IP protection, participants are free to resell...

This study compares bidding behavior in a multi-unit uniform-price descending price (Dutch) auction under four different information conditions. Bidders are either informed of the number of bidders in the auction, or know that it is one of two possible sizes; they also either know the number of...

This paper reports an experiment designed to evaluate interrelationships between strategic buyers, market power and merger-induced synergies. The experiment consists of 40 posted-offer quadropolies. Treatments include the use of simulated or human buyers, seller consolidations and merger-induced...

This paper reports an experiment designed to evaluate interrelationships between strategic buyers, market power and merger-induced synergies. The experiment consists of 40 posted-offer quadropolies. Treatments include the use of simulated or human buyers, seller consolidations and merger-induced...

We report an experiment conducted to gain insight into factors that may affect revenues in English auctions and lotteries, two commonly used charity fund-raising formats. In particular, we examine how changes in the marginal per capita return (MPCR) from the public component of bidding, and how...

When the value of a product or service is uncertain, outcomes can be inefficient. A market for evaluations can theoretically increase efficiency by voluntarily eliciting an evaluation that would otherwise not be provided. This paper uses a controlled laboratory experiment to test the performance...

We report a policy experiment that illustrates a potential problem of using historical pass-through rates as a means of predicting the competitive consequences of projected firm-specific cost savings in antitrust contexts, particularly in merger analysis. The effects of cost savings on welfare...

The history of the world is strewn with the remains of societies whose institutions failed to adapt to ecological change, but the determinants of institutional fragility are difficult to identify in the historical record. We report a laboratory experiment that explores the impact of an exogenous...

If, as Hume argues, property is a self-referring custom of a group of people, then property rights depend on how that group forms and orders itself. In this article we investigate how people construct a convention for property in an experiment in which groups of self-selected individuals can...