This paper discusses recent neuroeconomic evidence related to other-regarding behaviours and the decision to trust in other people’s other-regarding behaviour. This evidence supports the view that people derive non-pecuniary utility (i) from mutual cooperation in social dilemma (SD) games and...

This paper provides a survey of recent experimental work in economics focusing on social and economic networks. The experiments consider networks of coordination and cooperation, buyer-seller networks, and network formation.

Centralized sanctioning institutions are of utmost importance for overcoming free-riding tendencies and enforcing outcomes that maximize group welfare in social dilemma situations. However, little is known about how such institutions come into existence. In this paper we investigate, both...

Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976) show that there need not exist a competitive equilibrium in markets with adverse selection. Building on their framework we demonstrate that externalities between agents − an agent's utility upon accepting a contract depends on the average type attracted by the...

NGOs and other non-profit organizations attract workers who strongly identify themselves with their missions. We study whether these "good guys" are more trustworthy and how such pronounced group identities affect trust and trustworthiness within the groups and toward out-groups. We find that...

We conduct a social dilemma experiment in which real-world leaders can punish group members as a third party. Despite facing an identical environment, leaders are found to take remarkably different punishment approaches. The different leader types revealed experimentally explain the relative...

This discussion paper has resulted in the publication (2007) 'Order without law? Experimental evidence on voluntary cooperation and sanctioning', 2007, <I>KritV - Kritische Vierteljahresschrift fur Gesetzgebung und Rechtswissenschaft</I>, 90, 1-2, 140-155.In this paper we discuss experimental evidence...</i>

Team production is a frequent feature of modern organizations. Combined with team incentives, team production can create externalities among workers, since their utility upon accepting a contract depends on their team’s performance and therefore on their colleagues’ productivity. We study...

We provide the second mover in a trust game and a moonlighting game with an excuse for not reciprocating. While this type of manipulation has been shown to strongly reduce giving in the dictator game, we find that the availability of the excuse has no effect on the incidence of reciprocal...