The existing literature acknowledges that a mismatch between the experimenter’s and the subjects’ models of an experimental task can adversely affect the interpretation of data from laboratory experiments. We primarily focus on experiments designed to test a hypothesis by comparing behavior...

A novel two-person "charity game", related to the "Samaritan's Dilemma" [Buchanan, J.M., 1975. The samaritan's dilemma. In: Phelps, E.S. (Ed.), Altruism, Morality and Economic Theory. Russel Sage Foundation, New York, pp. 71-85], is used to experimentally investigate the relation between...

Without transparency about peer wages in a real effort experiment, a change of wages does not affect performance. With transparency, however, higher paid workers tend to work more accurately, and lower paid workers shirk more under piece rates.

This paper experimentally investigates the effects of a costly punishment option on cooperation and social welfare in long, finitely repeated public good contribution games. In a perfect monitoring environment, increasing the severity of the potential punishment monotonically increases average...