According to economists, severe legal sanctions deter violations of the law. According to legal scholars, people may obey law backed by mild sancions because of norm-activation. We experimentally investigate the effects of mild and severe legal sanctions in the provision of public goods. The...

The paper reports laboratory experiments on a day-to-day route choice game with two routes. Subjects had to choose between a main road M and a side road S. The capacity was greater for the main road. 18 subjects participated in each session. In equilibrium the number of subjects is 12 on M and 6...

In this paper we analyze a large sample of individual responses to six lottery questions. We derive a simultaneous estimate of risk aversion and the time preference discount rate per individual. This can be done because the consumption of a large prize is smoothed over a larger time period. It...

Field evidence suggests that agents belonging to the same group tend to behave similarly, i.e., behavior exhibits social interaction effects. Testing for such effects raises severe identification problems. We conduct an experiment that avoids these problems. The main design feature is that each...

According to the model of HOEL (1991), a unilateral emissions abatement of a global pollutant leads to lower aggregated emissions in a game with a simultaneous decision protocol. Our experiment tests the Hoel model and examines the question of whether a leader can induce additional abatement of...

This paper presents a formal theory of reciprocity. Reciprocity means that people reward kind actions and punish unkind ones. The theory takes into account that people evaluate the kindness of an action not only by its consequences but also the intention underlying this action. The theory...

This paper studies a game of strategic experimentation in which the players have access to two-armed bandits where the risky arm distributes lumpsum payoffs according to a Poisson process with unknown intensity. Because of free-riding, there is an inefficiently low level of experimentation in...

The power-to-take game is a simple two player game where players are randomly divided into pairs consisting of a take authority and responder. Both players in each pair have earned an income in an individual real effort decision-making experiment preceding the take game. The game consists of two...

Economic behavior often takes place in groups of small numbers of people interacting with each other (like work teams, neighborhoods, social networks, etc.). Characteristic of such interaction is the development of (affective) interpersonal relationships, or social ties. According to...

The formation of social ties is examined in an experimental study of voluntary public good provision. The experimental design consists of three parts. In the first part the value orientation (attitude to a generalized other) is measured. In the second part couples play a multi-period public good...