Do people care about intentions - even when good intentions do not produce good results? In our experiments we find that rates of punishment and reward react strongly to intentions (the wage a firm decides to pay) and more modestly to distributional outcomes (the higher or lower wage actually...

The impact of information dissemination and experimentation on dynamic adverse selection in noisy agency relationships is examined. Significant deviations in terms of equilibrium actions and payments occur, when compared to deterministic environments. Information dissipates slowly, so payments...

We examine demands for rewards and punishments in a simple proposer-responder game. The proposer first makes an offer to split a fixed-sized pie. According to the 2 x 2 design, the responder is or is not given a costly option of increasing or decreasing the proposer's payout. We find substantial...

A number of recent theoretical papers have shown that for buyer-size discounts to emerge in a bargaining model, the total surplus function over which parties bargain must have certain nonlinearities. We test the theory in an experimental setting in which a seller bargains with a number of buyers...

We examine how repeated interaction can facilitate coordinated turn-taking in a two-player infinitely repeated Volunteer's Dilemma. We conjecture that repetition creates an environment for players to coordinate on the Pareto efficient, but asymmetric pure strategy Nash equilibria of the stage...

This paper studies the evolution and co-evolution of both characteristics of reciprocity - the willingness to reward friendly behavior and the willingness to punish hostile behavior. Firstly, both preferences for rewarding and preferences for punishing can survive in evolution provided...

As is well-known, choices of a decision maker (DM) who attempts self-control in the face of temptation may exhibit menu effects and “non-standard” patterns. Existing models can accommodate some of these patterns but not others; e.g., they can explain self-control undermining menu effects,...

This work evaluates whether by rendering more salient to students their own student-identity it is possible to increase their effort and performance in an IQ-test. The idea is based on the assumption that individuals’ behavior is often influenced by cues that work subconsciously and prime them...

This paper explains the endowment effect, whereby sellers generally demand considerably more for a good than buyers are prepared to pay, and related anomalies. Many decisions, including nominating buying or selling prices, involve uncertainty, and we assert that people experience negative...