Many experimental studies report that economics students tend to act more selfishly than students of other disciplines, a finding that received widespread public and professional attention. Two main explanations that the existing literature offers for the differences found in the behavior...

Using an economic bargaining game, we tested for the existence of two phenomena related to social norms, namely norm manipulation – the selection of an interpretation of the norm that best suits an individual – and norm evasion – the deliberate, private violation of a social norm. We found...

We measured the beliefs and behavior of third parties who were given the opportunity to add to or deduct from the payoffs of individuals who engaged in an economic bargaining game under different social contexts. Third parties rewarded bargaining outcomes that were equal and compensated victims...

For decades, experimental economics has been very interested in behavior that could be characterized as practicing solidarity (although the term is rarely used). Solidarity is a key concept in Catholic Social Teaching. This paper builds a bridge between these two endeavors that, thus far, had...

If we take it that, at least in the social sciences, "realistic" implies "finite", then countless economic models involving infinitary assumptions must obviously be classified as unrealistic - for example, models with infinitely divisible goods, a continuum of traders, consumers optimizing over...

This is a contribution to the Journal Symposium on Douglass North's book on Understanding the Process of Economic Change by Structural Change and Economic Dynamics. It tries to understand his dynamic theory as that of the belief-institution co-evolution process and applies contributions of...

Powers of recursion are often adduced for ‘recombinant innovation'. The onset of the digital economy, based on operations on discretely encoded information, has renewed interest in this. Digital computing has a provenance with the John von Neumann dynamical systems theory based on complex...

Game and decision theory start from rather strong premises. Preferences, represented by utilities, beliefs represented by probabilities, common knowledge and symmetric rationality as background assumptions are treated as “given.” A richer language enabling us to capture the process leading...

To be admissible in federal court under the Daubert standard, expert economic testimony must be (1) based on scientific analysis and (2) aid the dispute resolution process. Expert evidence should be considered scientific when (1) it meets Karl Popper’s falsification standard and (2) some...

The Theory of Learning in Games by Fudenberg and Levine surveys a key branch of evolutionary economics from a mainstream perspective. Its publication provides an opportunity to reassess the prospects and goals for evolutionary economics