In a large scale newspaper experiment 5,132 readers of the German weekly, Die Zeit, participated in a three-person bargaining game. In our data analysis we focus on (1) the influence of age, gender, profession and the medium chosen for participation on bargaining behavior and on (2) the external...

Applying an evolutionary framework, we investigate how a reputation mechanism and abuyer insurance (as used on Internet market platforms such as eBay) interact to promote trustworthinessand trust. Our analysis suggests that the costs involved in giving reliable feedbackdetermine the gains from...

Social institutions regulating group conduct have been regarded as necessaryfor human cooperation to transcend family bonds. However, manystudies in economics and biology indicate that reciprocity based on repeatedinteraction suffices to establish cooperation with non-kin. We shedlight on the...

Leadership is important for the well-functioning of organizations. Weexamine the effects of leadership on contributions in public goods experiments.Leadership by example is implemented by letting one groupmember contribute to the public good before followers do. Such leadershipincreases...

If a strict equilibrium is suggested as the solution of a strategicgame in normal form and if some but not all players are committedto their solution strategy, a reduced game results with only thestill non-committed as active players. The reduced game property (orconsistency axiom) demands that...

Systematic experiments with distribution games (for a survey, see Roth, 1995, ) haveshown that participants are strongly motivated by fairness and efficiency considerations.This evidence, however, results mainly from experimental designs asking directly for sharingmonetary rewards. But even when...

A robust nding of repeated public goods experiments is that high initialcontribution rates sharply decline towards the end. This paper reports onan exploratory experiment designed to discover whether such a decline is simply triggered by the usual experimental practice of publicly informing...

Two traditional assumptions in neo-classical economics have beenmaterial self-interest and (commonly known) decision rationality. Sincethere is ample contradictory empirical evidence, many recent attemptshave been made to remodel the situation so that rational behavior ismore in line with actual...

Each of several exchange partners is the monopoly owner of a specific commoditywhich she can share with others. It is optimal to keep the own endowment, but allwould gain by mutual gift exchange. Participants play the game repeatedly in constantgroups (partner design) and can establish stable...

Hegemony is a central feature of contemporary international politicsbut it remains seriously under-theorized. We draw on cooperative game theoryto represent and analyze different aspects of hegemony. After developing ageneral conception of hegemony, we analyze the circumstances under which...