This paper presents four experiments testing the prediction that assignment of contract rights erodes the moral obligation to perform. The first three studies used an experimental laboratory game designed to model contractual exchange. Players in the games were less selfish with a...

Evidence for positive reciprocity, where subjects give more than dictators with the same endowment, has always been rare. We investigate the significant positive reciprocity in a prior experiment which broke a trust game into a 2-stage dictator game. There, the 2nd dictator knew that the 1st...

We show how to bound the effect of belief-dependent preferences on choices in sequential two-player games without information about the (higher-order) beliefs of players. The approach can be applied to a class of belief-dependent preferences which includes reciprocity (Dufwenberg and...

The current research uses the now-classic Trust Game and introduces a new, simultaneous version of the game to investigate whether people display trust as an influence tactic. Purely personal trusting decisions should lead trustors to send equivalent amounts in both versions of the game;...

This study experimentally examines how the generosity of an incentive contract offered by an experimental firm to a pair of employees and a feedback system that provides information on individual employee cooperativeness affect the sustainability of cooperation. Both contract generosity and the...

Different to other scientific disciplines traditional economic theory has remained remarkably silent about procedural aspects of strategic interactions. Much to the contrast, among psychologists there is by now a broad consensus that not only expected outcomes shape human behavior, but also...

Courts are willing, in commercial contests, to enforce promises even without consideration when enforcement supports a norm of reciprocity -- a norm which recognizes that such promises are seldom totally gratuitous, but are often made in furtherance of reciprocal, long-term, trust-based...

This article reports the results of a simple bargaining experiment on the ultimatum-revenge game. The game enables to differentiate between fairness that is stimulated by intentional based motives, distributional motives, and fairness considerations that mix both motives. The laboratory...

Research in behavioral economics has recognized the importance of reciprocity in individual behavior. The debate is dominated by a focus on direct reciprocity. Motivated in a real-life situation in Argentina - the piqueteros (pickets) conflict - I use a three-player three-stage game in order to...