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Abstract:
According to economists, severe legal sanctions deter violations of the law. According to legal scholars, people may obey law backed by mild sanctions because of norm-activation. We experimentally investigate the effects of mild and severe legal sanctions in the provision of public goods. The results show that severe sanctions almost perfectly deter free-riding. However, people also obey law backed by mild sanctions if it is accepted in a referendum. We show that voting for mild law induces expectations of cooperation, and that people tend to obey the law if they expect many others to do so.

Deterrent Effect of Legal Sanctions, Expressive Law, Social Norms, Public Goods, Voting

Abstract:
Moral considerations may matter much in voting because the costs of expressing support for a morally worthy cause may be low in a referendum. These costs depend on whether a voter expects to affect the outcome of the referendum. To test the low-cost theory of expressive voting, we experimentally investigate a proposal to tax everyone and to donate tax revenues. The analysis of expectations and voting decisions shows that the low-cost theory fails to explain voting decisions. Instead, we find that voters tend to approve of the proposal if they expect others to approve, too.

Expressive voting, low-cost theory

Abstract:
Moral considerations may matter much in voting because the costs of expressing support for a morally worthy cause may be low in a referendum. These costs depend on whether a voter expects to affect the outcome of the referendum. To test the low-cost theory of expressive voting, we experimentally investigate a proposal to tax everyone and donate tax revenues. The analysis of expectations and voting decisions shows that expressive voting is common. However, the low-cost theory fails to explain voting decisions. Instead of affecting the costs of expressive voting, expectations appear to affect its benefits.

Expressive voting, low-cost theory, laboratory experiments

Abstract:
There is abundant evidence that many individuals violate the rationality assumptions routinely made in economics. However, powerful evidence also indicates that violations of individual rationality do not necessarily refute the aggregate predictions of standard economic models that assume full rationality of all agents. Thus, a key question is how the interactions between rational and irrational people shape the aggregate outcome in markets and other institutions. We discuss evidence indicating that strategic complementarity and strategic substitutability are decisive determinants of aggregate outcomes. Under strategic complementarity, a small amount of individual irrationality may lead to large deviations from the aggregate predictions of rational models, whereas a minority of rational agents may suffice to generate aggregate outcomes consistent with the predictions of rational models under strategic substitutability.

Irrationality, Rationality, Anomaly, Aggregate Outcome, Competitive Markets, Money Illusion, Base Rate Fallacy

Abstract:
Economists long considered money illusion to be largely irrelevant. Here we show, however, that money illusion has powerful effects on equilibrium selection. If we represent pay-offs in nominal terms, choices converge to the Pareto inefficient equilibrium; however, if we lift the veil of money by representing pay-offs in real terms, the Pareto efficient equilibrium is selected. We also show that strategic uncertainty about the other players' behaviour is key for the equilibrium selection effects of money illusion: even though money illusion vanishes over time if subjects are given learning opportunities in the context of an individual optimization problem, powerful and persistent effects of money illusion are found when strategic uncertainty prevails.

Money illusion, coordination failure, equilibrium selection, multiple equilibria, coordination games

Abstract:
Economists long considered money illusion to be largely irrelevant. Here we show, however, that money illusion has powerful effects on equilibrium selection. If we represent payoffs in nominal terms, choices converge to the Pareto inefficient equilibrium; however, if we lift the veil of money by representing payoffs in real terms, the Pareto efficient equilibrium is selected. We also show that strategic uncertainty about the other players' behavior is key for the equilibrium selection effects of money illusion: even though money illusion vanishes over time if subjects are given learning opportunities in the context of an individual optimization problem, powerful and persistent effects of money illusion are found when strategic uncertainty prevails.

money illusion, coordination failure, equilibrium selection, multiple equilibria, coordination games

Abstract:
We investigate experimentally how firms and consumers react to a sudden cost increase in a competitive retail market. We compare two conditions that exclusively differ with respect to how difficult it is to organize and enforce boycotts. We find that cost increases translate into sudden price increases, and that consumer boycotts are frequent in response. However, consumer boycotts are unsuccessful in holding down market prices even if collective action problems are completely eliminated. While consumer boycotts do not increase consumer rent, they reduce market efficiency. Consumer boycotts apparently serve to punish firms for seemingly unfair price increases.

Abstract:
We experimentally investigate how firms and consumers react to a sudden cost increase in a competitive retail market. We compare two conditions which exclusively differ with respect to how difficult it is to organize and enforce boycotts. We find that cost increases translate into sudden price increases, and that these frequently trigger consumer boycotts. However, consumer boycotts are unsuccessful in holding down market prices even if collective action problems are completely eliminated. While consumer boycotts do not increase consumer rent, they reduce firm profits and market efficiency. Consumer boycotts apparently serve to punish firms for seemingly unfair price increases.

Posted-offer markets, Consumer boycotts, Collective action

Abstract:
The evidence from many experiments suggests that people are heterogeneous with regard to their abilities to make rational, forward looking, decisions. This raises the question when the rational types are decisive for aggregate outcomes and when the boundedly rational types shape aggregate results. We examine this question in the context of a long-standing and important economic problem - the adjustment of nominal prices after an anticipated money shock. Our experiments show that when agents' actions are strategic substitutes adjustment to the new equilibrium is extremely quick whereas under strategic complementarity adjustment lasts very long and is associated with relatively large real effects. This adjustment difference occurs because price expectations are very flexible under substitutability and very sticky under complementarity. Our results suggest that strategic complementarity does not only provide incentives for the rational types to partly mimic the behavior of the boundedly rational types but it also renders people less rational and forward looking. In addition, under complementarity people attribute less rationality to the other players.

Abstract:
What causes a government to adopt a new program or policy? Despite a large number of empirical studies available to date, the relative importance of various determinants remains obscure because of difficulties of statistical identification. We present an experimental setting to study the diffusion of policy innovations in the laboratory. Our approach discriminates between experimentation, experience, and emulation as determinants of policy adoption. The policy innovation we study is an internalization tax to mitigate a local market externality. Our results demonstrate the importance of information about innovations in other states in the diffusion of policy innovations.

Policy emulation, policy experimentation, innovation

Abstract:
The three-door problem is an astounding example of a systematic violation of a key rationality postulate. In this seemingly simple individual decision task, most people initially fail to correctly apply Bayes' Law, and to make the payoff-maximizing choice. Previous experimental studies have shown that individual learning reduces the incidence of irrational choices somewhat, but is far from eliminating it. We experimentally study the roles of communication and competition as institutions to mitigate the choice anomaly. We show that the three-door anomaly can be entirely eliminated by these institutions.

Bayes' Law, learning, competition, communication, individual decision making, group decision making

Abstract:
We use a model of self-centered inequality aversion suggested by Fehr and Schmidt (1999) to study voting on redistribution. We theoretically identify two classes of conditions when an empirically plausible amount of fairness preferences induces redistribution through referenda. We test the predictions of the adapted inequality aversion model in a simple redistribution experiment, and find that it predicts voting outcomes far better than the standard model of voting assuming rationality and strict self-interest.

Fairness, Voting, Redistribution

Abstract:
We describe a computerized experiment which can be used to introduce students to imperfect competition in courses on Introductory Economics, Industrial Organization, and Strategy & Management. In addition to introducing students to strategic thinking in general, the experiment serves to demonstrate that firm profits fall as the number of competitors is increased in a market, and that firms enter profitable markets. The authors have used the experiment in undergraduate classes on strategy and management as well as in MBA courses with great success.

Abstract:
Money illusion means that people behave differently when the same objective situation is represented in nominal terms rather than in real terms. This paper shows that seemingly innocuous differences in payoff representation cause pronounced differences in nominal price inertia indicating the behavioral importance of money illusion. In particular, if the payoff information is presented to subjects in nominal terms, price expectations and actual price choices after a fully anticipated negative nominal shock are much stickier than when payoff information is presented in real terms. In addition we show that money illusion causes asymmetric effects of negative and positive nominal shocks. While nominal inertia is quite substantial and long-lasting after a negative shock, it is rather small after a positive shock.

Money Illusion, Nominal Inertia, Sticky Prices, Non-Neutrality of Money

Abstract:
We use a unique panel data set to analyse price setting in restaurants in Switzerland 1977-1993, for items known to have sticky prices. The macroeconomic environment during this time period allows us to examine how firms adjust prices at low (0%) and fairly high (7%) inflation. Our results indicate that firms strongly react to inflation in the timing of their price adjustment: hazard of price changes is increasing with time and becomes steeper at higher inflation rates. However, we find little evidence that the amount by which they change the price responds to the inflation rate.

Sticky prices, inflation, nominal inertia

Abstract:
We use a unique panel data set to analyze price setting in restaurants in Switzerland 1977-1993, for items known to have sticky prices. The macroeconomic environment during this time period allows us to examine how firms adjust prices at low (0%) and fairly high (7%) inflation. Our results indicate that firms strongly react to inflation in the timing of their price adjustment: hazard of price changes is increasing with time and becomes steeper at higher inflation rates. However, we find little evidence that the amount by which they change the price responds to the inflation rate.

Sticky prices, Inflation, Nominal inertia

Abstract:
We study the effects of reputation and competition in a stylized market for experience goods. If interaction is anonymous, such markets perform poorly: sellers are not trustworthy, and buyers do not trust sellers. If sellers are identifiable and can, hence, build a reputation, efficiency quadruples but is still at only a third of the first best. Adding more information by granting buyers access to all sellers' complete history has, somewhat surprisingly, no effect. On the other hand, we find that competition, coupled with some minimal information, eliminates the trust problem almost completely.

experience goods, competition, reputation, trust, moral hazard, information conditions

Abstract:
We study the effects of reputation and competition in a stylized market for experience goods. If interaction is anonymous, such markets perform poorly: sellers are not trustworthy, and buyers do not trust sellers. If sellers are identifiable and can, hence, build a reputation, efficiency quadruples but is still at only a third of the first best. Adding more information by granting buyers access to all sellers' complete history has, somewhat surprisingly, no effect. On the other hand, we find that competition, coupled with some minimal information, eliminates the trust problem almost completely.

Experience Goods, Competition, Reputation, Trust, Moral hazard, Information conditions

Abstract:
Customer markets are characterized by long-term relationships between buyers and sellers that evolve if buyers trust sellers to provide high quality and if sellers are trustworthy. However, changes in the terms of this implicit contract may antagonize customers and disrupt the relationship. We experimentally show that mutually beneficial long-term relationships frequently prevail in markets for experience goods and that price rigidity after a temporary cost shock is much more pronounced if price increases cannot be justified by cost increases. Hence, long-term relationships in customer markets mitigate market failure of the "lemons" type, but are prone to price stickiness.

Customer market, price stickiness, customer loyalty

Abstract:
Customer markets are characterized by long-term relations between buyers and sellers. Long-term relations evolve if buyers trust sellers to provide high quality and if sellers are trustworthy. However, changes in the terms of this implicit contract may antagonize customers and disrupt the relation. We experimentally show that mutually beneficial long-term relations frequently prevail in markets for experience goods, and that price rigidity after a temporary cost shock is much more pronounced if price increases cannot be justified by cost increases. Hence, long-term relations on customer markets mitigate market failure of the "lemons" type, but are prone to price stickiness.

Customer market, price stickiness, customer loyalty

Abstract:
We develop a simple model of short- and long-term unemployment to study how labour market institutions interact with labour market conditions and personal characteristics of the unemployed. We analyze how the decision to exit unemployment and to mitigate human capital degradation by retraining depends on education, skill degradation, age, labour market tightness, taxes, unemployment insurance benefits and welfare assistance. We extend our analysis by allowing for time-inconsistent choices and demonstrate the possibility of an unemployment trap.

Unemployment, skill degradation, retraining, unemployment benefits, welfare assistance, present-biased preferences

Abstract:
We develop a simple model of labor market participation, human capital degradation, and re-training. We focus on how non-participation, as a distinct state from unemployment and employment, is determined by the welfare system in interaction with labor market conditions and personal characteristics. We provide a tractable framework to analyze how the decisions to exit the labor force and to mitigate human capital degradation by re-training depend on a broad range of factors such as education, skill degradation, age, labor market shocks, labor taxes, unemployment insurance benefits and social assistance. We extend our framework by allowing for time-inconsistent choices and demonstrate the possibility of an unemployment trap.

Unemployment, Skill Degradation, Retraining, Unemployment Benefits, Welfare Assistance, Present-Biased Preferences

Abstract:
We experimentally examine the effects of flexible and fixed prices in markets for experience goods in which demand is driven by trust. With flexible prices, we observe low prices and high quality in competitive (oligopolistic) markets, and high prices coupled with low quality in non-competitive (monopolistic) markets. We then introduce a regulated intermediate price above the oligopoly price and below the monopoly price. The effect in monopolies is more or less in line with standard intuition. As price falls volume increases and so does quality, such that overall efficiency is raised by 50%. However, quite in contrast to standard intuition, we also observe an efficiency rise in response to regulation in oligopolies. Both, transaction volume and traded quality are, in fact, maximal in regulated oligopolies.

Experience goods, markets, moral hazard, price competition, reputation, Trust

Abstract:
We experimentally examine the effects of flexible and fixed prices in markets for experience goods in which demand is driven by trust. With flexible prices, we observe low prices and high quality in competitive (oligopolistic) markets, and high prices coupled with low quality in non-competitive (monopolistic) markets. We then introduce a regulated intermediate price above the oligopoly price and below the monopoly price. The effect in monopolies is more or less in line with standard intuition. As price falls volume increases and so does quality, such that overall efficiency is raised by 50%. However, quite in contrast to standard intuition, we also observe an efficiency rise in response to regulation in oligopolies. Both, transaction volume and traded quality are, in fact, maximal in regulated oligopolies.

Markets, Price competition, Price regulation, Reputation, Trust, Moral hazard, Experience Goods

Abstract:
Tax Liability Side Equivalence (tax LSE) claims that the statutory incidence of a tax is irrelevant for its economic incidence. In gift-exchange labor markets, firms provide a gift to workers by paying high wages, and workers reciprocate by providing high efforts. Tax LSE is theoretically predicted to hold in gift-exchange markets if workers' effort choices exclusively depend on the net wage, but breaks down if they partially depend on the gross wage paid to workers. We experimentally test tax LSE in a gift-exchange market and find that it holds surprisingly well.

Tax incidence, Efficiency wages, Gift exchange, Experiments

Abstract:
According to the Mill hypothesis, the tax burden from indirect taxation is underestimated because indirect taxes are less visible than direct taxes. We experimentally test the Mill hypothesis and identify tax framing as a cause of fiscal illusion. We find that the tax burden associated with an indirect tax is underestimated, whereas this is not the case with an equivalent direct tax. In a referendum to tax and redistribute tax revenue, fiscal illusion is found to distort democratic decisions and to result in excessive redistribution. Yet, voters eventually learn to overcome fiscal illusion.

Fiscal illusion, voting behavior, indirect taxation, redistribution, learning

Abstract:
Tax incentives can be more or less salient, i.e. noticeable or cognitively easy to process. Our hypothesis is that taxes on consumers are more salient to consumers than equivalent taxes on sellers because consumers underestimate the extent of tax shifting in the market. We show that tax salience biases consumers' voting on tax regimes, and that experience is an effective de-biasing mechanism in the experimental laboratory. Pre-vote deliberation makes initially held opinions more extreme rather than correct and does not eliminate the bias in the typical committee. Yet, if voters can discuss their experience with the tax regimes they are less likely to be biased.

tax salience, learning, deliberation, voting

Abstract:
Reciprocal customers may disproportionately improve the performance of markets for experience goods. Reciprocal customers reward (punish) firms for providing good (bad) quality by upholding (terminating) the customer relation. This may induce firms to provide good quality which, in turn, may induce a positive externality for nonreciprocal customers who would, in the absence of reciprocal types, face market breakdown. This efficiency-enhancing effect of reciprocity is boosted when there are social ties between consumers and competition between firms. The existence of social ties or competition alone does not improve market performance.

Social networks, reputation, reciprocity, experience goods, customer loyalty

Abstract:
We test whether large but purely nominal shocks affect real asset market prices. We subject a laboratory asset market to an exogenous shock, which either inflates or deflates the nominal fundamental value of the asset, while holding the real fundamental value constant. After an inflationary shock, nominal prices adjust upward rapidly and we observe no real effects. However, after a deflationary shock, nominal prices display considerable inertia and real prices adjust only slowly and incompletely toward the levels that would prevail in the absence of a shock. Thus, an asymmetry is observed in the price response to inflationary and deflationary nominal shocks.

money illusion, nominal inertia, asset market bubble, nominal loss aversion, laboratory experiment

Abstract:
Books reviewed:

Jagdish Bhagwati, Free Trade Today

Michael Carlberg, An Economic Analysis of Monetary Union

Carl, Chiarella, Peter Flaschel, Gangolf Groh und Willi Semmler, Disequilibrium, Growth and Labor Market Dynamics

Badly Condon, NAFTA, WTO and Global Business Strategy

Paul De Grauwe (ed.), The Political Economy of Monetary Union

William Easterly, The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics

Anna Grandori, Organization and Economic Behavior

Mary Gregory, Wiemer Salverda and Stephen Bazen (eds.), Labour Market Inequalities

Karsten Junius, Ulrich Kater, Carsten-Patrick Meier und Henrik Müller, Handbuch Europaische Zentralbank

Janos Kornai and Karen Eggleston, Welfare, Choice, and Solidarity in Transition: Reforming the Health Sector in Eastern Europe

Peter Koslowski (ed.), The Theory of Capitalism in the German Economic Tradition

Constantine Michalopoulos, Developing Countries in the WTO

Torsten Persson and Guido Tabellini, Political Economics: Explaining Economic Policy

Heinz-Peter Spahn, From Gold to Euro

William Thomson, Guide for the Young Economist

Viktor J. Vanberg, The Constitution of Markets

Rami Zwick and Amnon Rapoport (eds.), Experimental Business Research

Abstract:
(no abstract)

Abstract:
In this paper, we study the effectiveness of intergroup competition in promoting cooperative behavior. We focus on intergroup competition that is non-rival in the sense that everyone can be a winner. This type of competition does not give groups an incentive to outcompete others. However, in spite of this fact, we find that intergroup competition produces a universal increase in cooperation. Furthermore, in settings where there are strong incentives to compete, intergroup competition benefits a majority of individuals.

intergroup competition, cooperation, public goods, experiment

Abstract:
Law backed by non-deterrent sanctions (mild law) has been hypothesized to achieve compliance because of norm activation. We experimentally investigate the effects of mild law in the provision of public goods by comparing it to severe law (deterrent sanctions) and no law. The results show that exogenously imposing mild law does not achieve compliance, but compliance is much improved if mild law is endogenously chosen, i.e., self-imposed. We show that voting for mild law induces expectations of cooperation, and that people tend to comply with the law if they expect many others to do so.

Abstract:
We test if cooperation is promoted by rank-order competition between groups in which all groups can be ranked first, i.e. when everyone can be a winner. This type of rank-order competition has the advantage that it can eliminate the negative externality a group's performance imposes on other groups. However, it has the disadvantage that incentives to outperform others are absent if groups perform at the same level and it therefore does not eliminate low-cooperation equilibria. We find that all-can-win competition produces a universal increase in cooperation and benefits a majority of individuals if incentives to compete are strong.

intergroup competition, cooperation, public goods, experiment

Abstract:
We show that the standard trust question routinely used in social capital research is importantly related to cooperation behavior and we provide a microfoundation for this relation. We run a large-scale public goods experiment over the internet in Denmark and find that the trust question is a proxy for cooperation preferences rather than beliefs about others’ cooperation. To disentangle the preference and belief channels, we run a (standard) public goods game in which beliefs matter for cooperation choices and one (using the strategy method) in which they do not matter. We show that the “fairness question”, a recently proposed alternative to the “trust question”, is also related to cooperation behavior but operates through beliefs rather than preferences.

social capital, trust, fairness, public goods, cooperation, experiment

Abstract:
No abstract available.

Abstract:
We examine abstention when voters in standing committees are asymmetrically informed and there are multiple pure strategy equilibria-swing voter's curse (SVC) equilibria where voters with low quality information abstain and equilibria when all participants vote their information. When the asymmetry in information quality is large, we find that voting groups largely coordinate on the SVC equilibrium which is also Pareto Optimal. However, we find that when the asymmetry in information quality is not large and the Pareto Optimal equilibrium is for all to participate, significant numbers of voters with low quality information abstain. Furthermore, we find that information asymmetry induces voters with low quality information to coordinate on a non-equilibrium outcome. This suggests that coordination on "letting the experts" decide is a likely voting norm that sometimes validates SVC equilibrium predictions but other times does not.

Abstract:
Arguing that consumers are the carriers of firms' reputations, we examine the role of consumer networks for trust in markets that suffer from moral hazard. When consumers are embedded in a network, they can exchange information with their neighbours about their private experiences with different sellers. We find that such information exchange fosters firms' incentives for reputation building and, thus, enhances trust and efficiency in markets. This efficiency-enhancing effect is already achieved with a rather low level of network density.

Consumer network, information conditions, moral hazard, reputation, trust

Abstract:
Individuals often pay more attention to price tags than to real value. Evidence shows that this may also have important effects on markets.

money illusion, experimental economics, economics and psychology

Abstract:
The three-door problem is an example of a systematic violation of a key rationality postulate that has attracted much attention. In this seemingly simple individual decision task, most people initially fail to apply correctly Bayes' Law, and to make the payoff-maximizing choice. Previous experimental studies have shown that individual learning reduces the incidence of irrational choices somewhat, but is far from eliminating it. We experimentally study the roles of communication and competition as institutions to mitigate the choice anomaly. We show that the three-door anomaly can be entirely eliminated by these institutions.

Bayes' law, learning, competition, communication, individual decision making, group decision making

Abstract:
Money illusion means that people behave differently when the same objective situation is represented in nominal terms rather than in real terms. This paper shows that seemingly innocuous differences in payoff representation cause pronounced differences in nominal price inertia indicating the behavioral importance of money illusion. In particular, if the payoff information is presented to subjects in nominal terms, price expectations and actual price choices after a fully anticipated negative nominal shock are much stickier than when payoff information is presented in real terms. In addition we show that money illusion causes asymmetric effects of negative and positive nominal shocks. While nominal inertia is quite substantial and long-lasting after a negative shock, it is rather small after a positive shock.

Money Illusion, Nominal Inertia, Sticky Prices, Non-neutrality of Money