Whether incentive contracts perform better than trust in terms of productive efficiency is usually explored by principal-agent experiments (most involving only one agent). We investigate this issue in the context of a three-person ultimatum experiment, which is simpler and more neutrally framed...

In this paper we report an experimental study of the ultimatum game in which subjects bargain for constant and slowly decreasing pies, over 3 and 11 rounds with either constant or alternating offers. With decreasing pies efficiency requires early agreements, whereas constant pies allow for late...

Similar to Levati and Neugebauer (2001), a clock is used by which participants can vary their individual contributions for voluntarily providing a public good. As time goes by, participants either in(de)crease their contribution gradually or keep it constant. Groups of two poorly and two richly...

In the experiment two bureaucrats independently can grant a permitwith the profit of the private party depending on when the permit is given.Whereas one bureaucrat can only veto the project, the second one hasadditional discretion in granting the permit earlier or later. We speakof greasing when...

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...

We adopt an evolutionary approach to investigate whether and when conditional cooperation can explain the voluntary contribution phenomenon often observed in public goods experiments and real life. Formally, conditional cooperation is captured by a regret parameter describing how much an...

A cyclical network of indirect reciprocity is derived organizing 3- or 6-person groups into rings of social interaction where the first individual can help the second, the second the third, and so on till the last, who in return can help the first. Mutual cooperation is triggered by assuming...

Whether incentive contracts perform better than trust in terms of productiveefficiency is usually explored by principal-agent experiments (mostinvolving only one agent). We investigate this issue in the context of athree-person ultimatum experiment, which is simpler and more neutrallyframed than...

We investigate the intertemporal allocation behavior of spouses with different deterministic life expectations in an experiment. In each period of their life both partners propose a consumption level of which one is then randomly implemented. In spite of the complex dynamics optimal behavior is...

This paper analyses individual information acquisition in an ultimatum game with a-priori unknown outside options. We find that while individual play seems to accord reasonably well with the distribution of empirical behavior, contestants seem to grossly overweigh the value of information. While...