A well-known result by Vega-Redondo implies that in symmetric Cournot oligopoly, imitation leads to the Walrasian outcome where price equals marginal cost. In this paper we show that this result is not robust to the slightest asymmetry in …xed costs. Instead of obtaining the Walrasian outcome as unique prediction, every outcome where agents choose identical actions will be played some fraction ...

We investigate to what extent genuine social preferences can explain observed other-regarding behavior. In a dictator game variant subjects can choose whether to learn about the consequences of their choice for the receiver. We find that a majority of subjects showing other-regarding behavior when the payoffs of the receiver are known, choose to ignore these consequences if possible. This behav...

We investigate the relationship between religion and trust. Using a questionnaire, we measure: i) general religiosity, and; ii) the extent of religious beliefs, experience, and ritual. These are then analyzed with behavior in a trust game (Berg et al., Games and Economic Behavior, 1995), which we also extend by providing information of a potential trustee’s religiosity in certain tasks. We find...

Social Comparison and Performance: Experimental Evidence on the Fair Wage-Effort Hypothesis We investigate the impact of wage comparisons for worker productivity. We present three studies which all use three-person gift-exchange experiments. Consistent with Akerlof and Yellen’s (1990) fair wage-effort hypothesis we find that disadvantageous wage discrimination leads to lower efforts while advan...

We experimentally test four different information aggregation mechanisms. Each mechanism is tested in a simple ‘two-state’ environment and a complex ‘eight-state’ environment where the number of securities is large (relative to the number of traders) and the Bayesian inference problem is significantly more difficult. We find that the Double Auction market mechanism performs well in the simple e...

In-group favoritism in social dilemma situations is one of the main findings of studies in Social Identity Theory. We investigate what causes the in-group bias: is it due to mere group affiliation or, alternatively, is guilt-aversion a possible explanation? We induce group membership in a minimal group setting, observe in-/out-group transfers and elicit respective beliefs. We find that mere gro...

Recent research has shown that women shy away from competition more often than men. We evaluate experimentally three alternative policy interventions to promote women in competitions: Quotas, Preferential Treatment, and Repetition of the Competition unless a critical number of female winners is reached. We find that Quotas and Preferential Treatment encourage women to compete significantly more...

Economic theory has evolved without paying proper attention to behavioral approaches, especially to social, economic, and cognitive psychology. This has recently changed by including behavioral economics courses in many doctoral study programs. Although this new development is most welcome, the typical topics of the behavioral economics courses are not truly behavioral. More specifically, we qu...

This paper studies whether psychological considerations can prevent agents from adopting potentially Pareto improving innovations. In the innovation game without the sharing option, A chooses whether to introduce an innovation that increases A’s payoff, but reduces B’s payoff, relative to “status quo” payoffs. B then decides whether to accept or reject the innovation. The unique subgame perfect...

This paper identifies when other-regarding preferences (ORPs) such as trust, reciprocity and altruism will likely arise. We experimentally examine the influence of social distance and communication on ORPs in four countries. We demonstrate that country of origin significantly influences ORPs, but also find mixed support for the relationship between ORPs and social distance; increasing social di...