Retributive responses do play a role in human behavior. Whether they are primarily triggered by supposed intentions or by observed consequences of actions is an important question. It can be addressed by experimental studies of retributive responses in situations in which the individual actor...

This paper analyses individual information acquisition in an ultimatum game with aprioriunknown outside options. We find that while individual play seems to accord reasonablywell with the distribution of empirical behavior, contestants seem to grossly overweighthe value of information. While...

We conducted a laboratory study with a public goods game in which contributions are not submitted all at once but incrementally as coordinated in real time by a clock. Individuals press a button as soon as the clock equals their willingness to contribute. This public goods institution exploits...

Relying on the specific example of ultimatum bargaining experiments this paper explores the possible role of empirical knowledge of behavioural "norm(ative) facts" within the search for (W)RE – (Wide) Reflective Equilibria on normative issues. Assuming that "pro-social" behaviour...

The indirect evolutionary approach integrates forward-looking evaluation of opportunities and adaptation in the light of the past. Subjective motivation determines behavior, but long-run evolutionary success of motivational types depends on objective factors only, what can justify intrinsic...

We study two person-betting games with inconsistent commonly know beliefs, using an experimentalapproach. In our experimental games, participants bet against one another, each bettorchoosing one of two possible outcomes, and payoff odds are know at the time bets are placed.Bettors’ beliefs are...

Unlike previous attempts to implement cooperation in a prisoners’ dilemma gamewith an infinite horizon in the laboratory, we focus on extended prisoners’ dilemmagames in which a second (pure strategy) equilibrium allows for voluntary cooperationin all but the last round. Our four main...

We study interaction effects between intra-firm conflicts and interfirm competitionon a duopolistic market with seller firms employing one or more agents and imple-menting tournament incentives. We show that inter-firm competition leads to higherincentive intensity, higher efforts and output...

We experimentally investigate how affective processes influence proposers’and responders’ behaviour in the Ultimatum Game. Using a dualsystemapproach, we tax cognitive resources through time pressure andcognitive load to enhance the influence of affective processes on behaviour.We find that...

Using a symmetric 2-person prisoners’ dilemma as the base game, each playerreceives a signal for the number of rounds to be played with the same partner.The actual number of rounds (the length of the supergame) is determined bythe maximal signal where each player expects the other’s signal...