Coleman (1990) describes 'calculative trust'. He states that, in order to trust, the value of trust has to be larger than the value of mistrust. So if subjects have (not personally but on average) rational expectations about the trustworthiness of their transaction partners, we should expect the...

The second-generation GSM spectrum auction in Germany is probably the most clear cut example of a low price outcome in a simultaneous ascending-bid auction.The present paper gives an account of the events, describes the auction rules and market conditions, and provides a theoretical explanation...

We experimentally investigate the effect of population viscosity (an increased probability to interact with others of one's type or group) on cooperation in a standard prisoner's dilemma environment. Subjects can repeatedly choose between two groups that differ in the defector gain in the...

Most incomes underlie some risk, i.e. ex ante they can be regarded as a lottery ticket. In every society, the lucky winners of this lottery compensate unlucky losers (unemployed workers or bankrupt entrepreneurs) privately and/or by public insurances. Do voluntary solidarity payments depend on...

In the Solidarity Game (Selten and Ockenfels, 1998) lucky winners of a lottery can transfer part of their income to unlucky losers. Will losers get smaller transfers if they can be assumed to be (partly) responsible for their zero income because they have chosen riskier lotteries (Trhal and...

This paper considers a two-stage oligopoly model with downstream retailers and two types of transaction costs (in contracting retailers and in direct retailing). Our analysis shows how transaction costs affect vertical integration in a strategic model of oligopoly, and it relates transaction...

We study how players learn to make decisions if they face many different games. Games are drawn randomly from a set of either two or six games in each of 100 rounds. If either there are few games or if extensive summary information is provided (or both) convergence to the unique Nash equilibrium...