Perfect or Bounded Rationality? Some Facts, Speculations and Proposals (2008)
The paper focuses on empirical studies of a class of very simple games of the reward allocation, dictator and ultimatum type. It is demonstrated that true explanations of social phenomena cannot...
Effects of Profitable Downsizing on Collective Bargaining (2008)
Fischer, Sven, Güth, Werner, Köhler, Christoph
We experimentally test how acceptance thresholds react to the decision of the proposer in a three party ultimatum game to exclude one of two responders with veto power from the game. We elicit...
Determinants of In-group Bias : Group Affiliation or Guilt-aversion? (2008)
Güth, Werner, Ploner, Matteo, Regner, Tobias
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...
Being of two minds : an ultimatum experiment investigating affective processes (2008)
Cappelletti, Dominique, Güth, Werner, Ploner, Matteo
We experimentally investigate how affective processes influence proposers’ and responders’ behaviour in the Ultimatum Game. Using a dualsystem approach, we tax cognitive resources through time...
Similar to welfare economics where with(out) interpersonal comparisons one defines unique (set-valued) welfare (Pareto) optima, we present a framework for one-person decision making where with(out) a...
Though the social choice of social institutions or social results is impossible – there is, strictly speaking, no social choice – individual evaluations of social institutions or results...
What Ethics Can Learn From Experimental Economics : If Anything (2008)
Relying on the specific example of ultimatum bargaining experiments this paper explores the possible role of empirical knowledge of behavioural “norm(ative) facts” within the search for an...
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Ploner, Matteo
On a heterogeneous experimental oligopoly market, sellers choose a price, specify a set-valued prior-free conjecture about the others' behavior, and form their own profit-aspiration for each element...
Satisficing in strategic environments : a theoretical approach and experimental evidence (2008)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Ploner, Matteo
The satisficing approach is generalized and applied to finite n-person games. Based on direct elicitation of aspirations, we formally define the concept of satisficing, which does not exclude...
Do investors optimize, follow heuristics, or listen to experts? (2008)
Gehrig, Thomas, Güth, Werner, Levinský, René, Popova, Vera
In the experimental scenario several agents repeatedly invest in n (n 2) state-speci c assets. The evolutionarily stable and equilibrium (Blume and Easley, 1992) portfolio for this situation requires...
Downsizing the Labor Force by Low and High Profit Firms : An Experimental Analysis (2008)
One may hope to capture the behavioral and emotional e ects of downsizing the labor force in rather abstract settings as an ultimatum game (see Fischer et al. (2008)), or try to explore downsizing in...
Attitudes toward private and collective risk in individual and strategic choice situations (2008)
Brennan, Geoffrey, González, Luis, Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria
Bribery and public procurement : an experimental study (2008)
Büchner, Susanne, Freytag, Andreas, González, Luis G., Güth, Werner
Explicit and Implicit Strategies in Decision Making (2008)
Güth, Werner, Keysers, Christian, Boyd, Robert, Cohen, Jonathan, Merlin, Donald, Johnson, Eric, ...
This paper analyses individual information acquisition in an ultimatum game with apriori unknown outside options. We find that while individual play seems to accord reasonably well with the...
Tax Morale and Optimal Taxation (2007)
Werner Güth, Rupert Sausgruber, Fram Richter, Gerald Pruckner
We study experimentally how taxpayers choose between two tax regimes to fund a public good. The first-best tax regime imposes a general, distortion-free income tax. However, this tax cannot be...
NOW O R LAT ER? –An Analysis of the Timing of Threats in B argaining (2007)
Siegfried K. Berninghaus, Werner Güth, Jena Germany
The variable threat-bargaining model of Nash (1953) assumes that threats in the sense of binding commitments as to what one will do if bargaining ends in conflict, are chosen before bargaining. By...
Inequality Aversion in a Variety of Games – An Indirect Evolutionary Analysis (2007)
The indirect evolutionary approach integrates forward-looking evaluation of opportu-nities and adaptation in the light of the past. Subjective motivation determines behavior, but long-run...
Tax Morale and (De-)Centralization- An Experimental Study- (2007)
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Rupert Sausgruber
We consider a society composed of two regions. Each of them provides a public good whose benefits reach beyond local boundaries. In case of decentralization, taxes collected by members of a region...
forthcoming: Journal of Conflict Resolution Retributive Responses (2007)
Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, Axel Ockenfels
Retributive responses do play a role in human behavior. Whether they are primarily triggered by supposed intentions or by observed consequences of actions is an important question. It can be...
Buying Versus Hiring – An Indirect Evolutionary Approach – (2007)
Siegfried K. Berninghaus, Werner Güth
On an otherwise symmetric oligopoly market with stochastic demands for heterogeneous products firms can either hire an employee or partner or buy the required labor input on the labor market. Whereas...
Partner selection in public goods experiments ∗ (2007)
Giorgio Coricelli A, Dietmar Fehr B, Gerlinde Fellner C, Anna Gunnthorsdottir, Werner Güth, Georg Kirchsteiger
This paper studies the effect of introducing costly partner selection for the voluntary contribution to a public good. Subjects participate in six sequences of five rounds of a two-person public good...
Werner Güth, Maria Vittoria Levati, Andreas Stiehler
Similar to Levati and Neugebauer (2001), a clock is used by which participants can vary their individual contributions for voluntarily providing a public good. As time goes by, participants either...
- An Experimental Study- (2007)
Ultimatum Games, Susanne Büchner, Luis González, Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Jel-classification C
Whether incentive contracts perform better than trust in terms of productive efficiency is usually explored by principal-agent experiments (most involving only one agent). We investigate this issue...
Will Equity Evolve?- An Indirect Evolutionary Approach- (2007)
It has been claimed that people often prefer equity-like considerations and tend to ignore strategic aspects in fair division problems. Here, this is explored by analyzing whether or not such a...
Jordi Br, Werner Güth, Andreas Stiehler
experiment studying the selection effect when assigning
Werner Güth, Axel Ockenfels, M. J. Holler, H. Kliemt, D. Schmidtchen, M. Streit (eds, ...
We report on a research program that employs the indirect evolutionary approach to analyze how the institutional environment drives the evolution of trust and trustworthiness through the evolution of...
Dennis Dittrich, Werner Güth, Boris Maciejovsky, Jel C
We experimentally test overconfidence in investment decisions by offering participants the possibility to substitute their own for alternative investment choices. Overall, 149 subjects participated...
Luis G. González, Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Jel Classification C
A robust finding of repeated public goods experiments is that high initial contribution rates sharply decline towards the end. This paper reports on an exploratory experiment designed to discover...
Let Me See You! : A Video Experiment on the Social Dimension of Risk Preferences (2007)
Güth, Werner, Levati, Vittoria M., Ploner, Matteo
Previous studies have shown that decision makers are less other-regarding when their own payoff is risky than when it is sure. Empirical observations also indicate that people care more about...
Interregional diversity of fairness concerns : An online ultimatum experiment (2007)
Georg, Sebastian J., Güth, Werner, Walkowitz, Gari, Weiland, Torsten
Does geographic distance or the perceived social distance between subjects significantly affect proposer and responder behavior in ultimatum bargaining? To answer this question, subjects play a...
A Non-Bayesian Approach to (Un)Bounded Rationality (2007)
Can one define and test the hypothesis of (un)bounded rationality in stochastic choice tasks without endorsing Bayesianism? Similar to the state specificity of assets, we rely on state-specific...
Cheap Talk and Secret Intentions in a Public Goods Experiments (2007)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Weiland, Torsten
In a public goods experiment, subjects can vary over a period of stochastic length two contribution levels: one is publicly observable (their cheap talk stated intention), while the other is not seen...
Scenario-Based Satisficing in Saving : A Theoretical and Experimental Analysis (2007)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Ploner, Matteo
Contrary to the models of deterministic life cycle saving, we take it for granted that uncertainty of one’s future is the essential problem of saving decisions. However, unlike the stochastic life...
On the Co-evolution of Insider Information and Idiosyncratic Beliefs (2007)
Gehrig, Thomas, Güth, Werner, Levinský, René
In a market with stochastic demand at most one seller can acquire costly information about demand. Other sellers entertain idiosyncratic beliefs about the market demand and the probability that an...
Berninghaus, Siegfried K., Bleich, Sabrina, Güth, Werner
Facing a stochastic market wage, which is independent of their own hiring policy, employers offer contracts specifying fixed wage, revenue share and employment duration. In ongoing employment...
Avrahami, Judith, Güth, Werner, Kareev, Yaakov, Uske, Tobias
When two or more agents compete for a bonus and the agents' productivity in each of several possible occurrences depends stochastically on (constant) effort, the number of times that are checked to...
Listen: I am angry! : An experiment comparing ways of revealing emotions (2007)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria
We report on an experiment designed to explore whether allowing individuals to voice their anger prevents costly punishment. For this sake, we use an ultimatum minigame and distinguish two...
Time to Defect : Repeated Prisoners’ Dilemma Experiments with Uncertain Horizon (2007)
Bruttel, Lisa, Güth, Werner, Kamecke, Ulrich
Using a symmetric 2-person prisoners’ dilemma as the base game, each player receives a signal for the number of rounds to be played with the same partner. The actual number of rounds (the length of...
(Non-) Behavioral Economics : A Programmatic Assessment (2007)
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...
Theoretically and experimentally, we generalize the analysis of acquiring a company (Samuelson and Bazerman 1985) by allowing for competition of both, buyers and sellers. Naıvety of both is related...
Competition in product design : An experiment exploring innovation behavior (2007)
Cantner, Uwe, Güth, Werner, Nicklisch, Andreas, Weiland, Torsten
We experimentally investigate competition in innovation in a patent race scenario. Pairs of subjects compete as seller firms on a duopoly market, engaging in risky search investments. Successful...
Are we nice(r) to nice(r) people? : An experimental analysis (2007)
Albert, Max, Güth, Werner, Kirchler, Erich, Maciejovsky, Boris
Leading by example with and without exclusion power in voluntary contribution experiments (2007)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Sutter, Matthias, Van Der Heijden, Eline
Buying a pig in a poke : An experimental study of unconditional veto power (2007)
Gehrig, Thomas, Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Levinsky, René, Ockenfels, Axel, Uske, Tobias, ...
Bargaining under Large Risk - An Experimental Analysis - (2006)
Güth, Werner, Kröger, Sabine, Maug, Ernst
We present an experimental study to learn about behavior in bargaining situations under large risks. In order to implement realistic risks involved in the field, we calibrate the experimental...
Bargaining under Large Risk - An Experimental Analysis - (2006)
Güth, Werner, Kröger, Sabine, Maug, Ernst
We present an experimental study to learn about behavior in bargaining situations under large risks. In order to implement realistic risks involved in the field, we calibrate the experimental...
Strategische Spiele : eine Einführung in die Spieltheorie (2006)
Berninghaus, Siegfried K., Ehrhart, Karl-Martin, Güth, Werner
Games that Doctors Play : Two-layered agency problems in a medical system (2006)
Behrens, Johann, Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Levati, M. Vittoria
Medical doctors act as agents of their patients by either treating them directly or referring them to other more or differently specialized doctors, who thereby become "agents of agents". The main...
Güth, Werner, Mengel, Friederike, Ockenfels, Axel
Applying an evolutionary framework, we investigate how a reputation mechanism and a buyer insurance (as used on Internet market platforms such as eBay) interact to promote trustworthiness and trust....
Bargaining Outside the Lab : A Newspaper Experiment of a Three-Person Ultimatum Game (2006)
Güth, Werner, Schmidt, Carsten, Sutter, Matthias
In a large scale newspaper experiment 5,132 readers of the German weekly, Die Zeit, participated in a three-person bargaining game. In our data analysis we focus on (1) the influence of age, gender,...
Population-Dependent Costs of Detecting Trustworthiness : An Indirect Evolutionary Analysis (2006)
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Napel, Stefan
If the (un)trustworthy are rare, people will talk about them, making their detection more reliable and / or less costly. When, however, both types appear in large numbers, detecting...
Task Transcending Satisficing : An Experimental Study (2006)
Fellner, Gerlinde, Güth, Werner, Martin, Ev
The paper explores the applicability of bounded rationality theory. In particular, we investigate whether basic principles of aspiration formation and satisficing behavior are transferable between...
Is Satisficing Absorbable? : An Experimental Study (2006)
Güth, Werner, Levati, Vittoria M., Ploner, Matteo
We experimentally investigate whether the satisficing approach is absorbable, i.e., whether it still applies after participants become aware of it. In a setting where an investor decides between a...
Satisficing or Optimizing? : An Experimental Study (2006)
Fellner, Gerlinde, Güth, Werner, Martin, Ev
This experimental study investigates whether individuals prefer bounded rationality over rational choice theory when facing simple investment tasks. First, participants state some personal parameters...
Collusion mechanisms in procurement auctions : An experimental investigation (2006)
Brosig, Jeannette, Güth, Werner, Weiland, Torsten
Collusive agreements are often observed in procurement auctions. They are probably more easily achieved when competitors' costs are easily estimated. If, however, the individual costs of bidders are...
Anspruchserfüllung und Portfolioauswahl : Theoretische Diskussion und experimentelle Evidenz (2006)
Das Anspruchserfüllungskonzept mit seinen Bausteinen "Anspruchsbildung, Anspruchserfüllung und Anspruchsanpassung" ist die zentrale Idee in der Theorie des eingeschränkt rationalen Entscheidens....
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Levati, M. Vittoria, Von Wangenheim, Georg
Standard economic explanations of good conduct in trade rely almost exclusively on future-directed extrinsic motivations induced by material incentives. But intrinsic motives to behave trustworthy...
Democratic Defenses and Destabilisations (2006)
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Napel, Stefan
The so-called paradox of democracy is approached as a variant of a more general class of so-called paradoxes of self-amendment. It is studied from a legal philosophy and a game theoretic point of...
I want to know : Willingness to pay for unconditional veto power (2006)
Güth, Werner, Levinský, René, Uske, Tobias, Gehrig, Thomas
In the Yes/No game, like in the ultimatum game, proposer and responder can share a monetary reward. In both games the proposer suggests a reward distribution which the responder can accept or reject...
Does anticipated aid create the need it wants to avoid? : An experimental investigation (2006)
Buitrago, Gelkha, Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria
A novel two-person "charity game" is used to experimentally investigate whether anticipation of help crowds out incentives to work, and therefore impulses to help. We distinguish two treatments...
Aspiration formation and satisficing in isolated and competitive search (2006)
Güth, Werner, Martin, Ev, Weiland, Torsten
We experimentally explore individual and interactive decision making in a sequential search task and test whether generally accepted principles of bounded rationality (aspiration formation,...
Social Networks and Employment : An Experimental Analysis (2006)
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Fischer, Sven, Güth, Werner
There is robust field data showing that a frequent and successful way of looking for a job is via the intermediation of friends and relatives. Here we want to explore this experimentally....
Satisficing in sales competition : experimental evidence (2006)
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Qiu, Jianying
In a stochastic duopoly market, sellers must form state-specific aspirations expressing how much they want to earn given their expectations about the other's behavior. We define individually and...
Leading by example with and without exclusion power in voluntary contribution experiments (2006)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Sutter, Matthias, Van Der Heijden, Eline
The study investigates protective responses in low probability and high loss risk situations. Particularly, it (1) detects individual protection valuations to variations in probability versus to...
Vertrauen und Unternehmen (2006)
Bereits im Jahre 1980 wählte Horst Albach einen spieltheoretischen und experimentellökonomischen Zugang zum Vertrauensproblem in der Ökonomik. Dieser Weg wird erneut beschritten. Es wird...
Güth, Werner, Llorente Erviti, Loreto, Ziegelmeyer, Anthony
The common prior assumption justifies private beliefs as posterior probabilities when updating a common prior based on individual information. Common priors are pervasive in most economic models of...
Satisficing in Portfolio Selection : Theoretical Aspects and Experimental Tests (2006)
The satisficing approach with its three constituent processes, aspiration formation, satisficing, and aspiration adjustment, is formally elaborated for a specific class of portfolio selection tasks....
From ultimatum to Nash bargaining : Theory and experimental evidence (2006)
Fischer, Sven, Güth, Werner, Stiehler, Andreas, Müller, Wieland
Chlaß, Nadine, Güth, Werner, Vanberg, Christoph
We investigate experimentally whether entry costs have an impact on the evolution of cooperation in a social dilemma game. In particular, subjects repeatedly play the so-called takeover game with...
Social identity and trust : An experimental investigation (2006)
Güth, Werner, Levati, Vittoria M., Ploner, Matteo
We experimentally examine how group identity affects trust behavior in an investment game. In one treatment, group identity is induced purely by minimal groups. In other treatments, group members are...
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Güth, Werner, Hoppe, Christian, Paul, Christian
Two firms, firm A in country A and firm B in country B, compete in hiring two types of workers. Type 1-workers would be less productive when working abroad whereas type 2-workers are equally...
Loss aversion and learning to bid (2005)
Dittrich, Dennis A. V., Güth, Werner, Kocher, Martin G., Pezanis-Christou, Paul
Bidding challenges learning theories since experiences for the same bid vary stochastically: the same choice can result in a gain or a loss. In such an environment the question arises how the nearly...
Effective equity experiences from an ultimatum experiment (2005)
Fairness like other social norms is usually stabilized by punishing norm deviations. Reward uncertainty, however, questions whether norm deviations can be detected and thus punished. By investing in...
The Effect of Group Identity in an Investment Game (2005)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Ploner, Matteo
The present research experimentally examines the influence of group identity on trust behavior in an investment game. In one treatment, group identity is manipulated only through the creation of...
Fair Wages and the Co-Employment of Hired and Rented Hands : An Experimental Study (2005)
Alewell, Dorothea, Friedrich, Colette, Güth, Werner, Kuklys, Wiebke
A firm with stochastic demand can rely on hired hands when demand is low and rent additional labour when demand is higher. For high demand this implies the co-employment of hired hands, paid directly...
Early versus Late Coalition Announcement in Experimental Democracies (2005)
Goodin, Robert E., Güth, Werner, Sausgruber, Rupert
Sometimes parties decide ahead of an election with whom they would (if possible) join in a coalition together. Other times they leave it completely open, until after the election, with whom they...
Vertical Cross-Shareholding Theory and Experimental Evidence (2005)
Güth, Werner, Nikiforakis, Nikos, Normann, Hans-Theo
This paper analyses vertical cross-shareholding, that is, the mutual holding of a minority of shares between vertically related firms. We investigate the conditions under which cross-shareholding...
Greiner, Ben, Güth, Werner, Zultan, Ro'i
To explain why pre-play communication increases cooperation in games, one refers to a) strategic causes such as efficient communication or reputation effects, and b) changes in the utilities due to...
The impact of payoff interdependence on trust and trustworthiness (2005)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Ploner, Matteo
In one-shot investment game experiments where each player's payoff is a convex combination of own and other's profit, trust remains unaffected by the extent of interdependence whereas trustworthiness...
Conventions for Implementing Conventions : An Evolutionary and Experimental Analysis (2005)
Büchner, Susanne, Güth, Werner, Miller, Luis M.
Conventions are interpreted in the narrow sense of coordinated equilibrium selection, i.e. a behavioral convention tells all players in a game with multiple strict equilibria which strict equilibrium...
Attitudes toward Private and Collective Risks in Individual and Strategic Choice Situations (2005)
Brennan, Geoffrey, González, Luis G., Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria
Idiosyncratic risk attitudes are usually assumed to be commonly known and restricted to own payoffs. However, the alternatives faced by a decision maker often involve risks for others' payoffs as...
Fellner, Gerlinde, Güth, Werner, Maciejovsky, Boris
In this paper, we apply the bounded rationality approach to an investment situation. In a simple setting where an investor decides between a riskless bond and a risky asset, we distinguish three...
In close interaction, group allocations are often fair due to our desire to be treated fairly and to act fairly. When this desire conflicts with other strong motivations a typical reaction is to...
Endogenous preemption on both sides of a market (2005)
Güth, Werner, Müller, Wieland, Potters, Jan
We study a market in which both buyers and sellers can decide to preempt and set their quantities before market clearing. Will this lead to preemption on both sides of the market, only one side of...
On the social dimension of time and risk preferences : An experimental study (2005)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Ploner, Matteo
We report on an experiment designed to explore the interrelation of other-regarding concerns with attitudes towards risk and delay when the latter have a social dimension, i.e., pertain to one's own...
Strategic Aspects of Hegemony (2005)
Goodin, Robert E., Güth, Werner, Snidal, Duncan
Hegemony is a central feature of contemporary international politics but it remains seriously under-theorized. We draw on cooperative game theory to represent and analyze different aspects of...
Bribery and Public Procurement : An Experimental Study (2005)
Büchner, Susanne, Freytag, Andreas, González, Luis G., Güth, Werner
A procurement contract is granted by a bureaucrat (the auctioneer) who is interested in a low price and a bribe from the provider. The optimal bids and bribes are derived based on an iid private cost...
Güth, Werner, Koschmieder, Kurt-Dieter, Levati, M. Vittoria, Martin, Ev
Direct transfers allow heirs to freely use what has been passed on to them. Bequeathers who do not trust their descendants to make proper use of the fortune may prefer investing it in a safe...
"Buying a pig in a poke" : An experimental study of unconditional veto power (2005)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Ockenfels, Axel, Weiland, Torsten
We study an ultimatum experiment in which the responder does not know the offer when accepting or rejecting. Unconditional veto power leads to acceptances, although proposers are significantly...
(Un)Reliable Concessions in Static and Dynamic Bargaining Experiments (2005)
Fischer, Sven, González, Luis G., Güth, Werner
A two-persons bargaining problem often consists of initially incompatible demands that can be unilaterally reduced by sequential concessions. In a 2 x 2 x 2 - factorial design we distinguish between...
Bidding behavior in asymmetric auctions : An experimental study (2005)
Güth, Werner, Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta, Wolfstetter, Elmar
Employment Duration and Resistance to Wage Reductions : Experimental Evidence (2005)
Burda, Michael, Güth, Werner, Kirchsteiger, Georg, Uhlig, Harald
Incentive contracts versus trust in three-person ultimatum games : an experimental study (2004)
Büchner, Susanne, González, Luis G., Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria
Competition in Innovation and Imitation : A Theoretical and Experimental Study (2004)
Cantner, Uwe, Güth, Werner, Nicklisch, Andreas, Weiland, Torsten
For given product specifications by two competing firms the demand levels are determined by a randomly generated ideal composition of aspects. Firms can vary some demand. Although the product space...
Güth, Werner, Kocher, Martin, Pantz, Katinka, Sutter, Matthias
Direct democracy with its use of referenda avoids the prototypical principal-agent problems of delegation in indirect democracies, especially since elected representatives are usually not committed...
Güth, Werner, Stadler, Manfred
Traditional game theory usually relies on commonly known decision rationality meaning that choices are made in view of their consequences (the shadow of the future). Evolutionary game theory,...
Tax Morale and Optimal Taxation (2004)
Güth, Werner, Sausgruber, Rupert
We study experimentally how taxpayers choose between two tax regimes to fund a public good. The first-best tax regime imposes a general, distorsion-free income tax. However, this tax cannot be...
Evolution of Spontaneous Social Exchange : An Experimental Study (2004)
Berninghaus, Siegfried K., Güth, Werner, Pantz, Katinka, Vogt, Bodo
Each of several exchange partners is the monopoly owner of a specific commodity which she can share with others. It is optimal to keep the own endowment, but all would gain by mutual gift exchange....
González, Luis G., Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria
A robust finding of repeated public goods experiments is that high initial contribution rates sharply decline towards the end. This paper reports on an exploratory experiment designed to discover...
The evolution of trust (worthiness) in the net (2004)
Due to the shadow of the future, exchange and the division of labor can be self-organizing on a small scale while it seems impossible for large interaction systems. The paper indicates that the...
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Güth, Werner, Kirstein, Annette
Systematic experiments with distribution games (for a survey, see Roth, 1995) have shown that participants are strongly motivated by fairness and efficiency considerations. This evidence, however,...
The Consistency Axiom : An Experimental Study (2004)
González, Luis G., Güth, Werner, Kuklys, Wiebke
If a strict equilibrium is suggested as the solution of a strategic game in normal form and if some but not all players are committed to their solution strategy, a reduced game results with only the...
Bounded Rationality and Theory Absorption (2004)
In plausible theories of bounded rationality actors are not stimulus-response machines but human beings. As such they are guided by theories that predict the course of the world and prescribe how...
Leadership and cooperation in public goods experiments (2004)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Sutter, Matthias, Van Der Heijden, Eline
Leadership is important for the well-functioning of organizations. We examine the effects of leadership on contributions in public goods experiments. Leadership by example is implemented by letting...
Relatives Versus Neighbors : An Experiment Studying Spontaneous Social Exchange (2004)
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Von Wangenheim, Georg
Social institutions regulating group conduct have been regarded as necessary for human cooperation to transcend family bonds. However, many studies in economics and biology indicate that reciprocity...
The Psychological Game of Trust (2004)
Dufwenberg, Martin, Güth, Werner
Two traditional assumptions in neo-classical economics have been material self-interest and (commonly known) decision rationality. Since there is ample contradictory empirical evidence, many recent...
Subjective payoffs that represent given preferences "all things considered" together with strictly uncommitted opportunity taking cannot account for the behavior of personal actors. It is shown how...
Conventions : Some Conventional and Some Not So Conventional Wisdom (2004)
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut
In this paper we consider conventions as regularities in behavior which help to solve coordination problems in a society. These problems can be formalized as non-cooperative games with several...
Approximate Truth in Economic Modelling (2004)
Brennan, Geoffrey, Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut
Economic intuitions concerning rational behaviour in interactive social situations are shaped by idealized models which are regarded as "approximately true". But ideal models cannot be meaningfully...
Take or Leave? : Distribution in Asymmetric One-Off Conflict (2004)
De Jasay, Anthony, Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Ockenfels, Axel
Durable-Goods Monopoly with Privately Known Impatience : A Theoretical and experimental study (2004)
Evolution of Spontaneous Social Exchange - An Experimental Study (2004)
Siegfried K. Berninghaus, Werner Güth, Katinka Pantz, Bodo Vogt
Each of several exchange partners is the monopoly owner of a specific commodity which she can share with others. It is optimal to keep the own endowment, but all would gain by mutual gift exchange....
Werner Güth, Martin Kocher, Katinka Pantz, Matthias Sutter
Direct democracy with its use of referenda avoids the prototypical principalagent problems of delegation in indirect democracies, especially since elected representatives are usually not committed by...
The Psychological Game of Trust (2004)
Martin Dufwenberg, Werner Güth
Two traditional assumptions in neo-classical economics have been material self-interest and (commonly known) decision rationality. Since there is ample contradictory empirical evidence, many recent...
Durable-Goods Monopoly with Privately Known Impatience: A Theoretical and Experimental Study (2004)
Güth, Werner, Kröger, Sabine, Normann, Hans-Theo
We analyze a durable-goods monopoly selling a single unit of a good to a buyer whose value of the good is private information. The discount factors of the buyer and the seller may differ and are also...
Decentralized versus collective bargaining : an experimental study (2003)
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Güth, Werner, Lechler, Robert, Ramser, Hans-Jürgen
Tax Morale and (De-)Centralization : An Experimental Study (2003)
Güth, Werner, Levati, Maria Vittoria, Sausgruber, Rupert
We consider a society composed of two regions. Each of them provides a public good whose benefits reach beyond local boundaries. In case of decentralization, taxes collected by members of a region...
The Bounds of Rationality, Philosophical, Psychological and Economic Aspects of Choice Making (2003)
Brandstätter, Hermann, Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut
This paper brings together views on choice making as have been developed in philosophy, psychology, and economics. Starting from specific examples the relative merits of different approaches are...
From Ultimatum to Nash Bargaining: Theory and Experimental Evidence (2003)
Fischer, Sven, Güth, Werner, Müller, Wieland, Stiehler, Andreas
We examine the strategic behavior of first and second movers in a two party bargaining game with uncertain information transmission. When the first mover states her demand she does only know the...
Reflections on Equilibrium Ideal Rationality and Analytic Decomposition of Games (2003)
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut
Taking seriously the philosophical foundations of classical strategic theories of choice-making we scrutinize to what extent planning on equilibrium strategies can be justified "eductively" among...
The commitment effect in belief evolution (2003)
Gehrig, Thomas, Güth, Werner, Levínský, René
In this note we establish that rational demand expectations will typically not evolve in an evolutionary model. In an evolutionary model, beliefs act like a commitment device to more aggressive...
This paper analyses individual information acquisition in an ultimatum game with a-priori unknown outside options. We find that while individual play seems to accord reasonably well with the...
Evolution in Imperfect Commitment Bargaining : Strategic versus Ignorant Types (2003)
Fischer, Sven, Güth, Werner, Pull, Kerstin
To commit credibly in bargaining is crucial: In the ultimatum game with its one-sided early commitment power the "proposer" gets (nearly) the whole pie while the "responder" is left with (almost)...
Berninghaus, Siegfried K., González, Luis G., Güth, Werner
Two firms, each consisting of a team with the owner and just one employee, compete on the labor market with free labor mobility. After observing the investment decisions by firm owners their...
Güth, Werner, Llorente Erviti, Loreto, Ziegelmeyer, Anthony
The common prior assumption asserts that the beliefs of agents in different states of the world are their posteriors based on a common prior and possibly some private signal. Common priors are...
Capacity Choices and Price Competition in Experimental Markets (2003)
Anderhub, Vital, Güth, Werner, Kamecke, Ulrich, Normann, Hans-Theo
The Bounds of Rationality: Philosophical, Psychological and Economic Aspects of Choice Making (2003)
Attitudes towards Risk : An Experiment (2003)
Güth, Werner, Eichberger, Jürgen, Müller, Wieland
The evaluations of a repeated lottery with and without the option to sell the second-stage lottery are compared theoretically and experimentally. Comparing individuals' risk attitudes, we find that...
On competing rewards standards - an experimental study of ultimatum bargaining (2003)
In the tradition of earlier experimental studies, this paper introduces competing reward standards by letting parties bargain over the distribution of chips. The monetary equivalents of a chip for...
Investment and Bargaining in Joint Ventures: A Family Decision-Making Experiment (2003)
Güth, Werner, Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta, Sutter, Matthias, Weck-Hannemann, Hannelore
Güth, Werner, Schmidt, Carsten, Sutter, Matthias
On 11 May 2001, readers of the Berliner Zeitung were invited to participate in an ultimatum bargaining experiment played in the strategy vector mode: each participant chooses not only how much (s)he...
Trust in the Shadow of the Courts (2003)
Brennan, Geoffrey, Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut
If contract enforcers must be randomly selected from the same population and thus are as opportunistic as ordinary traders could a system of adjudication nevertheless increase the degree to which...
Java Developer Connection, Introduction to CORBA (2003)
Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, Axel Ockenfels
Fairness is a strong concern as shown by dictator and ultimatum experiments. Efficiency, measured by the sum of individual payoffs, is a potentially competing concern in games such as the prisoners...
Evolution in Imperfect Commitment Bargaining - Strategic versus Ignorant Types (2003)
Sven Fischer, Werner Güth, Kerstin Pull
To commit credibly in bargaining is crucial: In the ultimatum game with its one-- sided early commitment power the "proposer" gets (nearly) the whole pie while the "responder" is...
Partner Selection in Public Goods Experiments (2003)
Giorgio Coricelli, Dietmar Fehr, Gerlinde Fellner, Werner Güth, Anna Gunnthorsdottir, Georg Kirchsteiger, ...
This paper studies the e#ect of introducing costly partner selection for the voluntary contribution to a public good. Subjects participate in six sequences of five rounds of a two-person public good...
Early or Late Conflict Settlement in a Variety of Games - An Experimental Study - (2002)
Anderhub, Vital, Güth, Werner, Marchand, Nadège
La théorie des jeux prédit que la résolution des jeux de négociation séquentielle dépend essentiellement de l'évolution de la rente à partager dans le temps (taux d'escompte), et du pouvoir...
Early or Late Conflict Settlement in a Variety of Games - An Experimental Study - (2002)
Anderhub, Vital, Güth, Werner, Marchand, Nadège
La théorie des jeux prédit que la résolution des jeux de négociation séquentielle dépend essentiellement de l'évolution de la rente à partager dans le temps (taux d'escompte), et du pouvoir...
Brandts, Jordi, Güth, Werner, Stiehler, Andreas
We study whether selection affects motivation. In our experiment subjects first answer a personality questionnaire. They then play a 3-person game. One of the three players decides between an outside...
Brandts, Jordi, Güth, Werner, Stiehler, Andreas
We study whether selection affects motivation. In our experiment subjects first answer a personality questionnaire. They then play a 3-person game. One of the three players decides between an outside...
I want YOU! An experiment studying the selection effect when assigning distributive power (2002)
Brandts, Jordi, Güth, Werner, Stiehler, Andreas
We study whether selection affects motivation. In our experiment subjects first answer a personality questionnaire. They then play a 3-person game. One of the three players decides between an outside...
On the inconsistency of equilibrium refinement (2002)
Consistency and optimality together with converse consistency provide an illuminating and novel characterization of the equilibrium concept (Peleg and Tijs, 1996). But (together with non-emptiness)...
Fairness versus efficiency : an experimental study of (mutual) gift giving (2002)
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Ockenfels, Axel
Fairness is a strong concern as shown by dictator and ultimatum experiments. Efficiency, measured by the sum of individual payoffs, is a potentially competing concern in games such as the prisoners'...
Buying versus hiring : an indirect evolutionary approach (2002)
Berninghaus, Siegfried K., Güth, Werner
On an otherwise symmetric oligopoly market with stochastic demands for heterogeneous products firms can either hire an employee or partner or buy the required labor input on the labor market....
Now or later? : An analysis of the timing of threats in bargaining (2002)
Berninghaus, Siegfried K., Güth, Werner
The variable threat-bargaining model of Nash (1953) assumes that threats in the sense of binding commitments as to what one will do if bargaining ends in conflict, are chosen before bargaining. By...
Tax evasion and state productivity : an experimental study (2002)
Güth, Werner, Strauß, Sabine, Sutter, Matthias
In an overlapping generations-experiment with multiple families participants can either support their parents directly and thereby reduce their tax burden or hope for tax-financed old age support....
Asymmetric auction experiments with(out) commonly known beliefs (2002)
Güth, Werner, Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta
Are commonly known beliefs essential for bidding behavior in asymmetric auctions? Our experimental results suggest that not informing participants how values are randomly generated does not change...
Durable-goods monopoly with privately known impatience : a theoretical and experimental study (2002)
Holistic experimentation versus decomposition : an ultimatum experiment (2002)
Albert, Max, Güth, Werner, Kirchler, Erich, Maciejovsky, Boris
Bid functions in auctions and fair division games : experimental evidence (2002)
Güth, Werner, Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta, Königstein, Manfred, Strobel, Martin
Are Family Transfers Crowded Out by Public Transfers? (2002)
Güth, Werner, Offerman, Theo, Potters, Jan, Strobel, Martin, Verbon, Harrie A. A.
Bargaining outside the lab : a newspaper experiment of a three-person ultimatum game (2002)
Güth, Werner, Schmidt, Carsten, Sutter, Matthias
In November 2001, 5,558 readers of the German weekly Die Zeit participated in a three person ulimatum experiment involving a proposer X, a responder Y, and a dummy Z (Güth and van Damme, 1998). A...
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut
This paper focuses on the uneasy alliance of rational choice and evolutionary explanations in modern economics. While direct evolutionary explanations of "optimality" rule out "purposeful" rational...
Inequality aversion in a variety of games : an indirect evolutionary analysis (2002)
The indirect evolutionary approach integrates forward-looking evaluation of opportunities and adaptation in the light of the past. Subjective motivation determines behavior, but long-run evolutionary...
Will equity evolve? : An indirect evolutionary approach (2002)
It has been claimed that people often prefer equity-like considerations and tend to ignore strategic aspects in fair division problems. Here, this is explored by analyzing whether or not such...
Experimentelle Ökonomik, Modell-Platonismus in neuem Gewande? (2002)
In diesem Beitrag lassen wir herkömmliche Kritikpunkte an der ökonomischen Neo-Klassik Revue passieren und untersuchen, inwieweit die heutige experimentelle Ökonomik diesen durch gesteigerte...
Incentive contracts versus trust in three-person ultimatum games : an experimental study (2002)
Büchner, Susanne, González, Luis, Güth, Werner, Levati, Maria Vittoria
Whether incentive contracts perform better than trust in terms of productive efficiency is usually explored by principal-agent experiments (most involving only one agent). We investigate this issue...
Wie Du mir, so ich Dir! : Ökonomische Theorie und Experiment am Beispiel der Reziprozität (2002)
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Napel, Stefan
Economists usually treat human behavior as being determined by the shadow of the future, while most other social scientists point to the shadow of the past. This paper considers experimental evidence...
Are we nice(r) to nice(r) people? : An experimental analysis (2002)
Albert, Max, Güth, Werner, Kirchler, Erich, Maciejovsky, Boris
We experimentally investigate whether individuals can reliably detect cooperators in an anonymous decision environment by allowing participants to condition their choices in an asymmetric prisoner's...
I want YOU : an experiment studying the selection effect when assigning distributive power (2002)
Brandts, Jordi, Güth, Werner, Stiehler, Andreas
In our experiment subjects first answer a personality questionnaire. They then take part in a 3-person game. In the game one player chooses between two possibilities. The first is an outside option...
Noisy leadership : an experimental approach (2002)
Güth, Werner, Müller, Wieland, Spiegel, Yossi
We examine the strategic behavior of leaders and followers in sequential duopoly experiments in which followers either perfectly observe the leaders' actions or else observe nothing. Our experiments...
The coevolution of trust and institutions in anonymous and non-anonymous communities (2002)
We report on a research program that employs the indirect evolutionary approach to analyze how the institutional environment drives the evolution of trust and trustworthiness through the evolution of...
The coevolution of morality and legal institutions : an indirect evolutionary approach (2002)
Evolutionary game theory is often used to analyze the evolution of moral preferences. A few studies also examine the coevolution of preferences and an institutional aspect of the decision...
Speeding up bureaucrats by greasing them : an experimental study (2002)
González, Luis, Güth, Werner, Levati, Maria Vittoria
In the experiment two bureaucrats independently can grant a permit with the profit of the private party depending on when the permit is given. Whereas one bureaucrat can only veto the project, the...
Putting limits to emotional behavior : an ultimatum experiment varying threat efficiency (2002)
Fellner, Gerlinde, Güth, Werner
Threat power is the ability to impose a great loss on someone else at relatively low own cost and can be measured by the ratio of other's and own loss. It can be varied by assuming that rejecting an...
When she lives longer : an experimental study of saving decisions by couples (2002)
Anderhub, Vital, Dittrich, Dennis, Güth, Werner, Marchand, Nadège
We investigate the intertemporal allocation behavior of spouses with different deterministic life expectations in an experiment. In each period of their life both partners propose a consumption level...
Privately contributing to public goods over time : an experimental study (2002)
Güth, Werner, Levati, Maria Vittoria, Stiehler, Andreas
Similar to Levati and Neugebauer (2001), a clock is used by which participants can vary their individual contributions for voluntarily providing a public good. As time goes by, participants either...
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Ockenfels, Axel
Retributive responses do play a role in human behavior. Whether they are primarily triggered by supposed intentions or by observed consequences of actions is an important question. It can be...
Strategische Spiele : eine Einführung in die Spieltheorie (2002)
Berninghaus, Siegfried K., Ehrhart, Karl-Martin, Güth, Werner
I want you! An experiment studying the selection effect when assigning distributive power. (2002)
Brandts, Jordi, Güth, Werner, Stiehler, Andreas
We study whether selection affects motivation. In our experiment subjects first answer a personality questionnaire. They then play a 3-person game. One of the three players decides between an outside...
Werner Güth, Carsten Schmidt, Matthias Sutter
In November 2001, 5,558 readers of the German weekly Die Zeit participated in a three person ultimatum experiment involving a proposer X, a responder Y, and a dummy Z (Güth and van Damme, 1998). A...
Threat power is the ability to impose a great loss on someone else at relatively low own cost and can be measured by the ratio of other’s and own loss. It can be varied by assuming that rejecting...
Speeding up Bureaucrats by Greasing Them. An Experimental Study (2002)
Luis González, Werner Güth, Maria Vittoria Levati
In the experiment two bureaucrats independently can grant a permit with the profit of the private party depending on when the permit is given. Whereas one bureaucrat can only veto the project, the...
Güth, Werner, Kocher, Martin, Sutter, Matthias
We study behavior in experimental beauty contests with, first, boundary and interior equilibria, and, second, homogeneous and heterogenous types of players. We find quicker and better convergence to...
Güth, Werner, Kocher, Martin, Sutter, Matthias
We study behavior in experimental beauty contests with, first, boundary and interior equilibria, and, second, homogeneous and heterogenous types of players. We find quicker and better convergence to...
Fairness in the Mail and Opportunism in the Internet (2001)
Güth, Werner, Schmidt, Carsten, Sutter, Matthias
On May 11, 2001, readers of the Berliner Zeitung were invited to participate in an ultimatum bargaining experiment played in the strategy vector-mode: Each participant chooses not only how much (s)he...
Fairness in the Mail and Opportunism in the Internet (2001)
Güth, Werner, Schmidt, Carsten, Sutter, Matthias
On May 11, 2001, readers of the Berliner Zeitung were invited to participate in an ultimatum bargaining experiment played in the strategy vector-mode: Each participant chooses not only how much (s)he...
The Parasite Game: Exploiting the Abundance of Nature in Face of Competition (2001)
Avrahami, Judith, Güth, Werner, Kareev, Yaakov
A situation in which the regularity in nature can be utilized while competition is to be avoided is modelled by the Parasite game. In this game regular behaviour could enhance guessing nature but...
The Parasite Game: Exploiting the Abundance of Nature in Face of Competition (2001)
Avrahami, Judith, Güth, Werner, Kareev, Yaakov
A situation in which the regularity in nature can be utilized while competition is to be avoided is modelled by the Parasite game. In this game regular behaviour could enhance guessing nature but...
From full to bounded rationality (2001)
Deriving advice that can in fact be utilized by boundedly rational decision makers is a central function of modeling choice making. We illustrate why this role is not being fulfilled well by standard...
From full to bounded rationality (2001)
Deriving advice that can in fact be utilized by boundedly rational decision makers is a central function of modeling choice making. We illustrate why this role is not being fulfilled well by standard...
Capacity Choices and Price Competition in Experimental Markets (2001)
Anderhub, Vital, Güth, Werner, Kamecke, Ulrich, Normann, Hans-Theo
In the heterogeneous experimental oligopoly markets of this paper, sellers first choose capacities and then prices. In equilibrium, capacities should correspond to the Cournot prediction. In the...
Capacity Choices and Price Competition in Experimental Markets (2001)
Anderhub, Vital, Güth, Werner, Kamecke, Ulrich, Normann, Hans-Theo
In the heterogeneous experimental oligopoly markets of this paper, sellers first choose capacities and then prices. In equilibrium, capacities should correspond to the Cournot prediction. In the...
Is there evidence for an adaptive toolbox? (2001)
Sadrieh, Abdolkarim, Güth, Werner, Hammerstein, Peter, Harnad, Stevan, Hoffrage, Ulrich, Kuon, Bettina, ...
forthcoming German Economic Review (2001)
Werner Güth, Carsten Schmidt, Matthias Sutter
# We would like to thank Sara Solnick for providing us with the raw data of her ultimatum game experiments. The constructive comments by Jörg Oechssler, two anonymous referees, and the responsible...
Werner Güth, Maria Vittoria Levati, Boris Maciejovsky
In this paper we report an experimental study of the ultimatum game in which subjects bargain for constant and slowly decreasing pies, over 3 and 11 rounds with either constant or alternating offers....
Private information, risk aversion, and the evolution of market research (2000)
Güth, Sandra, Güth, Werner, Müller, Wieland
On a homogeneous oligopoly market informed sellers are fully aware of market demand whereas uninformed sellers only know the distribution. We first derive the market results when sellers are risk...
Private information, risk aversion, and the evolution of market research (2000)
Güth, Sandra, Güth, Werner, Müller, Wieland
On a homogeneous oligopoly market informed sellers are fully aware of market demand whereas uninformed sellers only know the distribution. We first derive the market results when sellers are risk...
Fairness versus Efficiency (2000)
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Ockenfels, Axel
Fairness is a strong concern as shown by the robust results of dictator giving and ultimatum experiments. Efficiency, measured by the sum of individual payoffs, is another potential concern in games...
Fairness versus Efficiency (2000)
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Ockenfels, Axel
Fairness is a strong concern as shown by the robust results of dictator giving and ultimatum experiments. Efficiency, measured by the sum of individual payoffs, is another potential concern in games...
Trust and Reciprocity in the Investment Game with Indirect Reward (2000)
Güth, Werner, Königstein, Manfred, Marchand, Nadège, Nehring, Klaus
Experimental studies have shown that trust and reciprocity are effective in increasing efficiency when complete contracting is infeasible. One example is the study by Berg et al. (1995) of the...
Trust and Reciprocity in the Investment Game with Indirect Reward (2000)
Güth, Werner, Königstein, Manfred, Marchand, Nadège, Nehring, Klaus
Experimental studies have shown that trust and reciprocity are effective in increasing efficiency when complete contracting is infeasible. One example is the study by Berg et al. (1995) of the...
Why do you hate me? On the survival of spite (2000)
Martin Dufwenberg, Werner Güth
Spite involves harming others without good reasons. It may survive in small populations or on markets with strategic substitutes. We consider situations where selfishness helps efficiency. Here spite...
Direct vs Indirect Reciprocity: An Experiment (2000)
Martin Dufwenberg, Uri Gneezy, Werner Güth, Eric Van Damme
: In this paper we report experimental results that relate to the reciprocity experiment of Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe (1995). We consider direct reciprocity, which means to respond in kind to...
Auctions and Fair Division Games Under Different Price Rules (1999)
Güth, Werner, Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta, Königstein, Manfred, Strobel, Martin
Auctions and Fair Division Games Under Different Price Rules (1999)
Güth, Werner, Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta, Königstein, Manfred, Strobel, Martin
Decentralized or Collective Bargaining in a Strategy Experiment (1999)
Berninghaus, Siegfried K., Güth, Werner, Keser, Claudia
Nous présentons une expérience dans laquelle deux joueurs négocient avec un troisième joueur. Les deux joueurs peuvent négocier séparément ou former une coalition pour négocier collectivement...
Decentralized or Collective Bargaining in a Strategy Experiment (1999)
Berninghaus, Siegfried K., Güth, Werner, Keser, Claudia
Nous présentons une expérience dans laquelle deux joueurs négocient avec un troisième joueur. Les deux joueurs peuvent négocier séparément ou former une coalition pour négocier collectivement...
Evolutionary Norm Enforcement (1999)
Applying an indirect evolutionary approach with endogenous preference formation, we show that a legal system can induce players to reward trust even if material incentives dictate to exploit trust....
Decentralized or collective bargaining in a strategy experiment (1999)
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Güth, Werner, Keser, Claudia
We present an experiment where two players bargain with a third player. They can bargain either separately or form a joint venture to bargain collectively. Our theoretical benchmark solution predicts...
Decentralized or collective bargaining in a strategy experiment (1999)
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Güth, Werner, Keser, Claudia
We present an experiment where two players bargain with a third player. They can bargain either separately or form a joint venture to bargain collectively. Our theoretical benchmark solution predicts...
Evolutionary Norm Enforcement (1999)
Applying an indirect evolutionary approach with endogenous preference formation, we show that a legal system can induce players to reward trust even if material incentives dictate to exploit trust....
Dynamic Decision Structure and Risk Taking (1999)
Eichberger, Jürgen, Güth, Werner, Müller, Wieland
This paper investigates the behaviour in repeated decision situations. The experimental study shows that subjects show low or no risk-aversion, but put very high value on the opportunity to sell the...
Dynamic Decision Structure and Risk Taking (1999)
Eichberger, Jürgen, Güth, Werner, Müller, Wieland
This paper investigates the behaviour in repeated decision situations. The experimental study shows that subjects show low or no risk-aversion, but put very high value on the opportunity to sell the...
Güth, Werner, Ivanova, Radosveta, Königstein, Manfred, Strobel, Martin
We examine learning behavior in auctions and Fair division games with independent private values under two different price rules, first and second price. Participants face these four games repeatedly...
Güth, Werner, Ivanova, Radosveta, Königstein, Manfred, Strobel, Martin
We examine learning behavior in auctions and Fair division games with independent private values under two different price rules, first and second price. Participants face these four games repeatedly...
Martin Dufwenberg, Werner Güth
Two major methods of explaining economic institutions are compared for the case of a homogenous quadratic duopoly market. In the indirect evolutionary approach, sellers may evolve to care for sales,...
Employment Duration and Resistance to Wage Reductions (1998)
Burda, Michael C., Güth, Werner, Kirchsteiger, Georg, Uhlig, Harald
One of the long-standing puzzles in economics is why wages do not fall sufficiently in recessions so as to avoid increases in unemployment. Put differently, if the competitive market wage declines,...
Employment Duration and Resistance to Wage Reductions (1998)
Burda, Michael C., Güth, Werner, Kirchsteiger, Georg, Uhlig, Harald
One of the long-standing puzzles in economics is why wages do not fall sufficiently in recessions so as to avoid increases in unemployment. Put differently, if the competitive market wage declines,...
A psychological approach to individual differences in intertemporal consumption patterns (1998)
Brandstätter, Hermann, Güth, Werner
When people decide about saving and consumption across the various periods of their life time they take into account their life expectancy when comparing present and future needs and resources for...
A psychological approach to individual differences in intertemporal consumption patterns (1998)
Brandstätter, Hermann, Güth, Werner
When people decide about saving and consumption across the various periods of their life time they take into account their life expectancy when comparing present and future needs and resources for...
Species Survival and Evolutionary Stability in Sustainable Habitats (1998)
Whoever exists belongs to a species, which did not become extinct, has a (geno-) type, which should be well adjusted, and lives in a habitat which has been sustainable for a long time. To capture the...
Species Survival and Evolutionary Stability in Sustainable Habitats (1998)
Whoever exists belongs to a species, which did not become extinct, has a (geno-) type, which should be well adjusted, and lives in a habitat which has been sustainable for a long time. To capture the...
Presents or Investments? (1998)
Gneezy, Uri, Güth, Werner, Verboven, Frank
Individuals frequently transfer commodities without an explicit contract or an implicit enforcement mechanism. We design an experiment to study whether such commodity transfers can be viewed as...
Presents or Investments? (1998)
Gneezy, Uri, Güth, Werner, Verboven, Frank
Individuals frequently transfer commodities without an explicit contract or an implicit enforcement mechanism. We design an experiment to study whether such commodity transfers can be viewed as...
Do Banks Crowd in or out Business Ethics? (1998)
The evolution of trustworthiness as a major aspect of business ethics depends crucially on whether it can be signaled. If this is impossible, only opportunistic traders will survive. Whereas previous...
Do Banks Crowd in or out Business Ethics? (1998)
The evolution of trustworthiness as a major aspect of business ethics depends crucially on whether it can be signaled. If this is impossible, only opportunistic traders will survive. Whereas previous...
The relevance of equal splits (1998)
Güth, Werner, Huck, Steffen, Müller, Wieland
The findings on the ultimatum game are considered as belonging to the most robust experimental results. In this paper we present a slightly altered version of the mini ultimatum game of Bolton and...
The relevance of equal splits (1998)
Güth, Werner, Huck, Steffen, Müller, Wieland
The findings on the ultimatum game are considered as belonging to the most robust experimental results. In this paper we present a slightly altered version of the mini ultimatum game of Bolton and...
Sequential versus independent commitment (1998)
Rational bargaining behavior depends crucially on the rules of bargaining, especially on whether parties decide sequentially or independently. Whereas in ultimatum bargaining the proposer can exploit...
Sequential versus independent commitment (1998)
Rational bargaining behavior depends crucially on the rules of bargaining, especially on whether parties decide sequentially or independently. Whereas in ultimatum bargaining the proposer can exploit...
Dufwenberg, Martin, Güth, Werner
Two major methods of explaining economic institutions, namely by strategic choices or through (indirect) evolution, are compared for the case of a homogenous quadratic duopoly market. Sellers either...
The relevance of equal splits - On a behavioral discontinuity in ultimatum games (1998)
Werner Güth, Steffen Huck, Wieland Müller
The findings on the ultimatum game are considered as belonging to the most robust experimental results. In this paper we present a slightly altered version of the mini ultimatum game of Bolton and...
Rational bargaining behavior depends crucially on the rules of bargaining, especially on whether parties decide sequentially or independently. Whereas in ultimatum bargaining the proposer can exploit...
Do Banks Crowd in or out Business Ethics? - An Indirect Evolutionary Analysis - (1998)
The evolution of trustworthiness as a major aspect of business ethics depends crucially on whether it can be signaled. If this is impossible, only opportunistic traders will survive. Whereas previous...
Specific Institutional Aspects of International Cooperation (1997)
If one abstracts from specially organized markets like stock or commodity exchanges, (international) trade relies on bargaining between the interested parties. Whereas earlier the results of...
Specific Institutional Aspects of International Cooperation (1997)
If one abstracts from specially organized markets like stock or commodity exchanges, (international) trade relies on bargaining between the interested parties. Whereas earlier the results of...
Indirect Evolution Versus Strategic Delegation (1997)
Dufwenberg, Martin, Güth, Werner
The two major methods of explaining economic institutions, namely by strategic choices or by (indirect) evolution, are compared for the case of a homogenous quadratic duopoly market. Sellers either...
Indirect Evolution Versus Strategic Delegation (1997)
Dufwenberg, Martin, Güth, Werner
The two major methods of explaining economic institutions, namely by strategic choices or by (indirect) evolution, are compared for the case of a homogenous quadratic duopoly market. Sellers either...
Ultimatum Proposals - How Do Decisions Emerge? (1997)
The basic idea of decision emergence is to generate the prefered decision alternative instead of assuming it as exogeneously given like in neo-classical economics and game theory. The particular...
Trust in the Shadow of the Courts If Judges Are No Better (1997)
Geoffrey Brennan, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
Can a court system conceivably control opportunistic behavior if judges are selected from the same population as ordinary citizens and thus are no better than "the rest of us"? This paper...
Martin Dufwenberg, Werner Güth
: The two major methods of explaining economic institutions, namely by strategic choices or by (indirect) evolution, are compared for the case of a homogenous quadratic duopoly market. Sellers either...
Specific Institutional Aspects of International Cooperation - A GAME Theoretic Account - (1997)
If one abstracts from specially organized markets like stock or commodity exchanges, (international) trade relies on bargaining between the interested parties. Whereas earlier the results of...
Evolutionary game theory is often used to analyze the evolution of moral preferences. A few studies also examine the coevolution of preferences and an institutional aspect of the decision...
Tax morale and (de-)centralization: An experimental study
Werner Güth, Vittoria Levati, Rupert Sausgruber
We consider an economy composed of two regions. Each of them provides a public good whose benefits reach beyond local boundaries. In case of decentralization, taxes collected by members of a region...
Werner Güth, Kurt-Dieter Koschmieder, M. Vittoria Levati, Ev Martin
Direct transfers allow heirs to freely use what has been passed on to them. Bequeathers who do not trust their descendants to make proper use of the fortune may prefer investing it in a safe...
"Buying a pig in a poke": An experimental study of unconditional veto power
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Axel Ockenfels, Torsten Weiland
We study an ultimatum experiment in which the responder does not know the offer when accepting or rejecting. Unconditional veto power leads to acceptances, although proposers are significantly...
(Un)Reliable Concessions in Static and Dynamic Bargaining Experiments
Sven Fischer, Luis G. Gonzalez, Werner Güth
A two-persons bargaining problem often consists of initially incompatible demands that can be unilaterally reduced by sequential concessions. In a 2 x 2 x 2 - factorial design we distinguish between...
Robert E. Goodin, Werner Güth, Duncan Snidal
Hegemony is a central feature of contemporary international politics but it remains seriously under-theorized. We draw on cooperative game theory to represent and analyze different aspects of...
Bargaining Outside the Lab – A Newspaper Experiment of a Three-Person Ultimatum Game
Werner Güth, Carsten Schmidt, Matthias Sutter
In a large scale newspaper experiment 5,132 readers of the German weekly, Die Zeit, participated in a three-person bargaining game. In our data analysis we focus on (1) the influence of age, gender,...
Vertical Cross-Shareholding Theory and Experimental Evidence
Werner Güth, Nikos Nikiforakis, Hans-Theo Normann
This paper analyses vertical cross-shareholding, that is, the mutual holding of a minority of shares between vertically related firms. We investigate the conditions under which cross-shareholding...
On the social dimension of time and risk preferences: An experimental study
M. Vittoria Levati, Werner Güth, Matteo Ploner
We report on an experiment designed to explore the interrelation of other-regarding concerns with attitudes towards risk and delay when the latter have a social dimension, i.e., pertain to one's own...
Endogenous preemption on both sides of a market
Wieland Müller, Werner Güth, Jan Potters, Susanne Büchner
We study a market in which both buyers and sellers can decide to preempt and set their quantities before market clearing. Will this lead to preemption on both sides of the market, only one side of...
In close interaction, group allocations are often fair due to our desire to be treated fairly and to act fairly. When this desire conflicts with other strong motivations a typical reaction is to...
Attitudes toward Private and Collective Risks in Individual and Strategic Choice Situations
Geoffrey Brennan, Werner Güth, Luis G. Gonzalez, M. Vittoria Levati
Idiosyncratic risk attitudes are usually assumed to be commonly known and restricted to own payoffs. However, the alternatives faced by a decision maker often involve risks for others' payoffs as...
Gerlinde Fellner, Werner Güth, Boris Maciejovsky
In this paper, we apply the bounded rationality approach to an investment situation. In a simple setting where an investor decides between a riskless bond and a risky asset, we distinguish three...
Bribery and Public Procurement - An Experimental Study -
Susanne Büchner, Andreas Freytag, Luis G. Gonzalez, Werner Güth
A procurement contract is granted by a bureaucrat (the auctioneer) who is interested in a low price and a bribe from the provider. The optimal bids and bribes are derived based on an iid private cost...
Overconfidence in investment decisions: An experimental approach
Dennis Dittrich, Werner Güth, Boris Maciejovsky
By experimentally inducing risk aversion, overconfidence in an investment setting is investigated, comparing the evaluation of actual investment decisions with alternative choices. After selecting...
Tax Morale and Optimal Taxation
Werner Güth, Rupert Sausgruber
We study experimentally how taxpayers choose between two tax regimes to fund a public good. The first-best tax regime imposes a general, distortion-free income tax. However, this tax cannot be...
Bribery and Public Procurement - An Experimental Study
Susanne Büchner, Andreas Freytag, Luis G. Gonzalez, Werner Güth
A procurement contract is granted by a bureaucrat (the auctioneer) who is interested in a low price and a bribe from the provider. The optimal bids and bribes are derived based on an iid private cost...
Games that Doctors Play Two-layered agency problems in a medical system
Johann Behrens, Hartmut Kliemt, M. Vittoria Levati, Werner Güth
Medical doctors act as agents of their patients by either treating them directly or referring them to other more or differently specialized doctors, who thereby become "agents of agents". The main...
Friederike Mengel, Axel Ockenfels, Werner Güth
Applying an evolutionary framework, we investigate how a reputation mechanism and a buyer insurance (as used on Internet market platforms such as eBay) interact to promote trustworthiness and trust....
Bargaining Outside the Lab - A Newspaper Experiment of a Three-Person Ultimatum Game
Carsten Schmidt, Matthias Sutter, Werner Güth
In a large scale newspaper experiment 5,132 readers of the German weekly, Die Zeit, participated in a three-person bargaining game. In our data analysis we focus on (1) the influence of age, gender,...
Co-evolution of preferences and information in simple games of trust
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Peleg, Bezalel
In standard rational choice modelling decisions are made according to given information and preferences. In the model presented here the 'information technology' of individual decision makers as well...
The general framework of decision emergence (Güth, 2000a) is applied to the specific decision task of a proposer in ultimatum bargaining, i.e. to choosing how much the responder should be offered....
Dufwenberg, Martin, Gneezy, Uri, Güth, Werner, Van Damme, Eric
Direct reciprocity means to respond in kind to another person whereas indirect reciprocity is understood here as rewarding someone else. We perform corresponding experiments which use a similar...
Robust learning experiments confront participants with structurally different decision environments which they encounter, furthermore, repeatedly. Since the decision format does not depend on the...
Whereas orthodox game theory relies on the unrealistic assumption of (commonly known) perfect rationality, participants in game playing experiments are at best boundedly rational. This makes it...
Alternating Offer Bargaining Experiments with Varying Institutional Details
Anderhub, Vital, Güth, Werner, Marchand, Nadège
The game theoretic prediction for alternating offer bargaining depends crucially on how “the pie” changes over time, and whether the proposer in a given round has ultimatum power. We study...
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Ockenfels, Axel
Retributive responses do play a role in human behavior. Whether they are primarily triggered by supposed intentions or by observed consequences of actions is an important question. It can be...
Güth, Werner, Neuefeind, Wilhelm
Many consumption prices are highly volatile. It would certainly overburden our cognitive system to fully adjust to all these changes. Households therefore often rely on simple heuristics when...
Bidding Behavior in Asymmetric Auctions
Güth, Werner, Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta, Wolfstetter, Elmar
We review an asymmetric auction experiment. Based on Plum (1992) private valuations of the two bidders are independently drawn from distinct but commonly known distributions, one of which...
Privately Contributing to Public Goods over Time
Güth, Werner, Levati, Maria Vittoria, Stiehler, Andreas
Similar to Levati and Neugebauer (2001), a clock is used by which participants can vary their individual contributions for voluntarily providing a public good. As time goes by, participants either...
On the evolution of power indices in collective bargaining
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Güth, Werner
Starting point of our (indirect) evolutionary analysis is the sequential bargaining model of Manning (1987) who distinguishes between trade union's power in initial wage and in later employment...
Avrahami, Judith, Güth, Werner, Kareev, Yaakov
Predating predators requires at least three specimen to which we refer as players 1, 2, and 3. Player 1 has simply to guess nature when trying to find food. Player 2 is hunting player 1 in the hope...
Prior Dispositions and Actual Behavior in Dictator and Ultimatum Games
Brandstätter, Hermann, Güth, Werner, Himmelbauer, Judith, Kriz, Willy
Individuals differ in behavior since neither their ethical constraints, their attitudes towards risk, nor their analytical talents are the same. In an experimental prephase we tried to elicit such...
Avrahami, Judith, Güth, Werner, Kareev, Yaakov
Predating predators requires at least three specimen to which we refer as players 1, 2, and 3. Player 1 has simply to guess nature when trying to find food. Player 2 is hunting player 1 in the hope...
On the evolution of power indices in collective bargaining
Berninghaus, Siegfried, Güth, Werner
Starting point of our (indirect) evolutionary analysis is the sequential bargaining model of Manning (1987) who distinguishes between trade union's power in initial wage and in later employment...
Privately Contributing to Public Goods over Time
Güth, Werner, Levati, Maria Vittoria, Stiehler, Andreas
Similar to Levati and Neugebauer (2001), a clock is used by which participants can vary their individual contributions for voluntarily providing a public good. As time goes by, participants either...
Bidding Behavior in Asymmetric Auctions
Güth, Werner, Ivanova-Stenzel, Radosveta, Wolfstetter, Elmar
We review an asymmetric auction experiment. Based on Plum (1992) private valuations of the two bidders are independently drawn from distinct but commonly known distributions, one of which...
Güth, Werner, Neuefeind, Wilhelm
Many consumption prices are highly volatile. It would certainly overburden our cognitive system to fully adjust to all these changes. Households therefore often rely on simple heuristics when...
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Ockenfels, Axel
Retributive responses do play a role in human behavior. Whether they are primarily triggered by supposed intentions or by observed consequences of actions is an important question. It can be...
Alternating Offer Bargaining Experiments with Varying Institutional Details
Anderhub, Vital, Güth, Werner, Marchand, Nadège
The game theoretic prediction for alternating offer bargaining depends crucially on how “the pie” changes over time, and whether the proposer in a given round has ultimatum power. We study...
Whereas orthodox game theory relies on the unrealistic assumption of (commonly known) perfect rationality, participants in game playing experiments are at best boundedly rational. This makes it...
Robust learning experiments confront participants with structurally different decision environments which they encounter, furthermore, repeatedly. Since the decision format does not depend on the...
Dufwenberg, Martin, Gneezy, Uri, Güth, Werner, Van Damme, Eric
Direct reciprocity means to respond in kind to another person whereas indirect reciprocity is understood here as rewarding someone else. We perform corresponding experiments which use a similar...
Prior Dispositions and Actual Behavior in Dictator and Ultimatum Games
Brandstätter, Hermann, Güth, Werner, Himmelbauer, Judith, Kriz, Willy
Individuals differ in behavior since neither their ethical constraints, their attitudes towards risk, nor their analytical talents are the same. In an experimental prephase we tried to elicit such...
The general framework of decision emergence (Güth, 2000a) is applied to the specific decision task of a proposer in ultimatum bargaining, i.e. to choosing how much the responder should be offered....
Co-evolution of preferences and information in simple games of trust
Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut, Peleg, Bezalel
In standard rational choice modelling decisions are made according to given information and preferences. In the model presented here the 'information technology' of individual decision makers as well...
Trust in the shadow of the courts if judges are no better
Brennan, Geoffrey, Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut
Can a court system conceivably control opportunistic behavior if judges are selected from the same population as ordinary citizens and thus are no better than "the rest of us"? This paper provides a...
Trust in the shadow of the courts if judges are no better
Brennan, Geoffrey, Güth, Werner, Kliemt, Hartmut
Can a court system conceivably control opportunistic behavior if judges are selected from the same population as ordinary citizens and thus are no better than "the rest of us"? This paper provides a...
Population-Dependent Costs of Detecting Trustworthiness - An Indirect Evolutionary Analysis -
Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, Stefan Napel
If the (un)trustworthy are rare, people will talk about them, making their detection more reliable and / or less costly. When, however, both types appear in large numbers, detecting...
Satisficing or Optimizing? - An Experimental Study
Werner Güth, Gerlinde Fellner, Ev Martin
This experimental study investigates whether individuals prefer bounded rationality over rational choice theory when facing simple investment tasks. First, participants state some personal parameters...
Task Transcending Satisficing - An Experimental Study
Werner Güth, Gerlinde Fellner, Ev Martin
The paper explores the applicability of bounded rationality theory. In particular, we investigate whether basic principles of aspiration formation and satisficing behavior are transferable between...
(In)Transparency of Information Acquisition: A Bargaining Experiment
Gehrig, Thomas, Güth, Werner, Levínsky, René
We analyze how transparency affects information acquisition in a bargaining context, where proposers may chose to purchase information about the unknown outside option of their bargaining partner....
Does anticipated aid create the need it wants to avoid? An experimental investigation
Gelkha Buitrago, Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati
A novel two-person "charity game" is used to experimentally investigate whether anticipation of help crowds out incentives to work, and therefore impulses to help. We distinguish two treatments...
Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, M. Vittoria Levati, Geog Von Wangenheim
Standard economic explanations of good conduct in trade rely almost exclusively on future-directed extrinsic motivations induced by material incentives. But intrinsic motives to behave trustworthy...
Anspruchserfüllung und Portfolioauswahl - Theoretische Diskussion und experimentelle Evidenz
Das Anspruchserfüllungskonzept mit seinen Bausteinen „Anspruchsbildung, Anspruchserfüllung und Anspruchsanpassung“ ist die zentrale Idee in der Theorie des eingeschränkt rationalen...
Satisficing in Portfolio Selection - Theoretical Aspects and Experimental Tests
The satisficing approach with its three constituent processes, aspiration formation, satisficing, and aspiration adjustment, is formally elaborated for a specific class of portfolio selection tasks....
Democratic Defenses and Destabilisations
Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, Stefan Napel
The so-called paradox of democracy is approached as a variant of a more general class of so-called paradoxes of self-amendment. It is studied from a legal philosophy and a game theoretic point of...
Collusion mechanisms in procurement auctions: An experimental investigation
Werner Güth, Jeannette Brosig, Torsten Weiland
Collusive agreements are often observed in procurement auctions. They are probably more easily achieved when competitors’ costs are easily estimated. If, however, the individual costs of bidders...
I want to know: Willingness to pay for unconditional veto power
Werner Güth, René Levínský, Tobias Uske, Thomas Gehrig
In the Yes/No game, like in the ultimatum game, proposer and responder can share a monetary reward. In both games the proposer suggests a reward distribution which the responder can accept or reject...
Aspiration formation and satisficing in isolated and competitive search
Werner Güth, Ev Martin, Torsten Weiland
We experimentally explore individual and interactive decision making in a sequential search task and test whether generally accepted principles of bounded rationality (aspiration formation,...
When to Coalesce: Early versus Late Coalition Announcement in an Experimental Democracy
Robert E. Goodin, Rupert Sausgruber, Werner Güth
In multi-party democracies, several parties usually have to join together in coalition to form government. Many aspects of that process have been fairly fully investigated, others less so. Among the...
Siegfried K. Berninghaus, Werner Güth, Christian Hoppe, Christian Paul
Two firms, firm A in country A and firm B in country B, compete in hiring two types of workers. Type 1-workers would be less productive when working abroad whereas type 2-workers are equally...
Bargaining outside the lab - a newspaper experiment of a three-person ultimatum game
Werner Güth, Carsten Schmidt, Matthias Sutter
5,132 readers of the German weekly, "Die Zeit", participated in a three-person bargaining experiment. In our data analysis we focus on (1) the influence of age, gender, profession and medium chosen...
A Non-Bayesian Approach to (Un)Bounded Rationality
Can one define and test the hypothesis of (un)bounded rationality in stochastic choice tasks without endorsing Bayesianism? Similar to the state specificity of assets, we rely on state-specific goal...
Competition in product design: An experiment exploring innovation behavior
Uwe Cantner, Werner Güth, Andreas Nicklisch, Torsten Weiland
We experimentally investigate competition in innovation in a patent race scenario. Pairs of subjects compete as seller firms on a duopoly market, engaging in risky search investments. Successful...
Fairness Within Firms: The Case Of One Principal And Multiple Agents
Werner Güth, Manfred Königstein, Judit Kovács, Enikõ Zala-Mezõ
Many experimental studies report evidence of fairness in bargaining games. More recently fairness and its consequences for productive efficiency have been explored in principal agent games, in which...
Judith Avrahami, Werner Güth, Yaakov Kareev, Tobias Uske
When two or more agents compete for a bonus and the agents' productivity in each of several possible occurrences depends stochastically on (constant) effort, the number of times that are checked to...
TAX EVASION AND STATE PRODUCTIVITY-AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY
Werner Güth, Sabine Strauß, Matthias Sutter
In an overlapping generations experiment with multiple families participants can support their parents directly and thereby reduce their tax burden or rely on tax-financed old-age support. State...
Inequality Aversion in a Variety of Games - An Indirect Evolutionary Analysis
The indirect evolutionary approach integrates forward-looking evaluation of opportunities and adaptation in the light of the past. Subjective motivation determines behaviour, but long-run...
Zur spieltheoretischen Methodik in Betriebs- und Volkswirtschaftslehre
Nach Einordung der Spieltheorie als Rationalverhalten bei interaktiven sozialen Entscheidungsproblemen in Volks- und Betriebswirtschaftslehre werden kurz die (Spiel-)Formen zur Abbildung sozialer...
Which Markets Would Sellers Choose if They Could? - Wishful Thinkink and Monopolistic Competition
The question "which utility function would homo oeconomicus choose if he could?" (Frank, 1987) is answered for interactive markets where sellers are assumed to freely choose their dependency on the...
Direct versus Indirect Reciprocity: An Experiment
Martin Dufenberg, Uri Gneezy, Werner Güth, Eric Van Demme
In this paper we report experimental results that relate to the recprocity experiment of Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe (1995). We consider direct reciprocity, which means to respond in kind to another...
How Ultimatum Offers Emerge: A Study in Bounded Rationality
The general framework of decision emergence (Güth, 200a) is applied to the specific decision task of a proposer in ultimatum bargaining, i.e. to choosing how much the responder should be offered....
By vetoing one question mutually efficient agreements. On the other hand, the threat of vetoing may prevent exploitation. Based on a generalization of ultimatum bargaining (Suleiman, 1996), we first...
Exploring Behavior: An Ultimatum Experiment
Max Albert, Erich Kirchler, Werner Güth, Boris Maciejovsky
In phase 1 of our experiment every participant plays the ultimatum game with each of the other five group members, each taking the role of proposer and responder. For each of the offers one learns...
Will Cooperators Manage to Cooperate? - Experimental Evidence
Max Albert, Erich Kirchler, Werner Güth, Boris Maciejovsky
It is often claimed that, if one could sense whether the other is going to cooperate or not, cooperators will manage to cooperate. Our experiment tries to shed new light on this debate. Participants...
Bounded Rationality and Theory Absorption
In plausible theories of bounded rationality actors are not stimulus-response machines but human beings. As such they are guided by theories that predict the course of the world and prescribe how...
PROCUREMENT EXPERIMENTS WITH UNKNOWN COSTS OF QUALITY
Werner Güth, Radosveta Ivanova-Stenzel, Sabine Kröger
We experimentally examine the efficiency and profitability of two different procurement auctions allowing for quality differences across products. We compare the vector auction with more competition...
Competition on Common Value Markets with Naive Traders - A Theoretical and Experimental Analysis
Theoretically and experimentally, we generalize the analysis of acquiring a company (Samuelson and Bazerman 1985) by allowing for competition of both, buyers and sellers. Naivety of both is related...
Distributive fairness in an intercultural ultimatum game
Sebastian Goerg, Werner Güth, Gari Walkowitz, Torsten Weiland
Does geographic or (perceived) social distance between subjects signi?cantly affect proposer and responder behavior in ultimatum bargaining? To answer this question, subjects once play an ultimatum...
Effects of Profitable Downsizing on Collective Bargaining
Sven Fischer, Werner Güth, Christoph Köhler
We experimentally test how acceptance thresholds react to the decision of the proposer in a three party ultimatum game to exclude one of two responders with veto power from the game. We elicit...
Listen: I am angry! An experiment comparing ways of revealing emotions
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati
We report on an experiment designed to explore whether allowing individuals to voice their anger prevents costly punishment. For this sake, we use an ultimatum minigame and distinguish two...
Time to Defect: Repeated Prisoners' Dilemma Experiments with Uncertain Horizon
Lisa Bruttel, Werner Güth, Ulrich Kamecke
Using a symmetric 2-person prisoners' dilemma as the base game, each player receives a signal for the number of rounds to be played with the same partner. The actual number of rounds (the length of...
(Non-) Behavioral Economics - A Programmatic Assessment
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...
The Impact of Payoff Interdependence on Trust and Trustworthiness
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Matteo Ploner
In one-shot investment games where each player's payoff is a convex combination of own and other's profit, we measure trust by the amount given to the trustee and trustworthiness by the amount...
Fairness Crowded Out by Law: An Experimental Study on Withdrawal Rights. Comment
Werner Güth, Georg Von Wangenheim
no abstract available.
Social identity and trust - An experimental investigation
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Matteo Ploner
We experimentally examine how group identity affects trust behavior in an investment game. In one treatment, group identity is induced purely by minimal groups. In other treatments, group members are...
An experimental study of a dynamic principal-agent relationship
Werner Güth, Wolfgang Klose, Manfred Königstein, Joachim Schwalbach
The principal-agent problem is often illustrated by the relationship between owners and managers in modern corporations. Our experimental study considers the problem where the owner has to motivate...
EVOLUTION IN IMPERFECT COMMITMENT BARGAINING-STRATEGIC VERSUS IGNORANT TYPES
Sven Fischer, Werner Güth, Kerstin Pull
To commit in bargaining is crucial: in the ultimatum game with its one-sided commitment power the 'proposer' (almost) receives the whole pie while the 'responder' is left with (almost) nothing. When...
Co-evolution of Preferences and Information in Simple Games of Trust
Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, Bezalel Peleg
In standard rational choice modelling decisions are made according to given information and preferences. In the model presented here the `information technology' of individual decision-makers as well...
On the Interaction of Risk and Time Preferences: An Experimental Study
Vital Anderhub, Werner Güth, Uri Gneezy, Doron Sonsino
Experimental studies of risk and time preference typically focus on one of the two phenomena. The goal of this paper is to investigate the (possible) correlation between subjects' attitude to risk...
Bid Functions in Auctions and Fair Division Games: Experimental Evidence
Werner Güth, Radosveta Ivanova-Stenzel, Manfred Königstein, Martin Strobel
In auctions a seller offers a commodity for sale and collects the revenue. In fair division games the object is collectively owned by the group of bidders who equally share the revenue. We run an...
Fairness in the Mail and Opportunism in the Internet: A Newspaper Experiment on Ultimatum Bargaining
Werner Güth, Carsten Schmidt, Matthias Sutter
On 11 May 2001, readers of the Berliner Zeitung were invited to participate in an ultimatum bargaining experiment played in the strategy vector mode: each participant chooses not only how much (s)he...
Take or Leave? Distribution in Asymmetric One-Off Conflict
Anthony Jasay, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, Axel Ockenfels
Conflit et coopération sociaux sont le plus souvent conçus en termes de jeux simples, non répétés, effectués deux par deux, symétriques et simultanés tels que le dilemme du prisonnier,...
Trust in the Shadow of the Courts
Geoffrey Brennan, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
Even if contract enforcers are as opportunistic as ordinary traders, a system of adjudication can increase the degree to which contractual obligations on large anonymous markets are fulfilled. Only...
Investment and Bargaining in Joint Ventures: A Family Decision Making Experiment
Werner Güth, Radosveta Ivanova-Stenzel, Matthias Sutter, Hannelore Weck-Hannemann
Bilateral joint ventures, such as marriage, are economically inspired by their prospects of labor division and specialization. However, specialization makes the partnerwho investsmore in...
Voluntary versus Compulsory Solidarity: Theory and Experiment
Werner Güth, Matthias Sutter, Harrie Verbon
We present an overlapping-generations model with two interacting teams, where young team members earn an income, whereas old team members depend on either intrateam transfers from young members...
Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, M. Vittoria Levati, Georg Von Wangenheim
Standard economic explanations of good conduct in trade rely almost exclusively on future-directed extrinsic motivations induced by material incentives. But intrinsic motives to behave trustworthily...
Ben Greiner, Werner Güth, Ro'i Zultan
To explain why pre-play communication increases cooperation in games, one refers to a) strategic causes such as efficient communication or reputation effects, and b) changes in the utilities due to...
Tax morale and (de-)centralization: An experimental study
Werner Güth, Vittoria Levati, Rupert Saugruber
We consider an economy composed of two regions. Each of them provides a public good whose benefits reach beyond local boundaries. In case of decentralization, taxes collected by members of a region...
Ist die Normalform die normale Form?
Die Frage, welche Dartsellungsweise strategischer Interaktionen man als grundlegend für die spieltheoretische Analyse und insoweit als normale Form von Spielen anzusehen hat, ist keineswegs rein...
Heuristics as Decision Rules - Part I: The Cobb Douglas Consumer
Werner Güth, Wilhelm Neuefeind
Many consumption prices are highly volatile. It would certainly overburden our cognitive system to fully adjust to all these changes. Households therefore often rely on simple heuristics when...
Trust and Reciprocity in the Investment Game with Indirect Reward
Werner Güth, Manfred Königstein, Nadège Marchand, Klaus Nehring
Experimental studies have shown that trust and reciprocity are effective in increasing efficiency when complete contracting is infeasible. One example is the study by Berg et al. (1995) of the...
How Paulus Becomes Saulus An Experimental Study of Equal Punishment Games
Marlies Ahlert, Arwed Crüger, Werner Güth
In equal punishment games like in ultimatum games first a proposer suggests how to split the pie, i.e. a positive monetary reward. Unlike in ultimatum games, the responder can decide among many (for...
Predating Predators: An experimental Study
Judith Avrahami, Yaakov Kareev, Werner Güth
The phenomenon of predating predators requires at least three specimens to whom we refer as players 1, 2, and 3. Player 1 has simply to guess nature when trying to find food. Player 2 is hunting...
Reflections on Equilibrium: Ideal Rationality and Analytic Decomposition of Games
Siegfried Berninghaus, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
Taking seriously the philosophical foundations of classical strategic theories of choice-making we scrutinize to what extent planning on equilibrium strategies can be justified "eductively" among...
The Bounds of Rationality: Philosophical, Psychological and Economic Aspects of Choice Making
Hermann Brandstätter, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
This paper brings together views on choice making as have been developed in philosophy, psychology, and economics. Starting from specific examples the relative merits of different approaches are...
Conventions: Some Conventional and Some Not So Conventional Wisdom
Siegfried Berninghaus, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
Problems of social coordination can be formalized as non-cooperative games with several equilibria. We know that in such situations serious problems of equilibrium selection arise which cannot be...
Employment Duration and Resistance to Wage Reductions: Experimental Evidence
Michael Burda, Werner Güth, Georg Kirchsteiger, Harald Uhlig
One of the long-standing questions in economics is whether or not wages will fall sufficiently in recessions so as to avoid increases in unemployment. Put differently, if the competitive market wage...
Corporate Culture as a Resource for Management. Comment
no abstract available
Tax Evasion with Earned Income - An Experimental Study
Vital Anderhub, Sebastian Giese, Werner Güth, Antje Hoffmann, Thomas Otto
In our tax evasion experiment each participant earns his income by solving intertemporal allocation tasks. The resulting income has to be declared in a tax return which is randomly verified. If tax...
Werner Güth, Maria Vittoria Levati, Boris Maciejovsky
In this paper we report an experimental study of the ultimatum game in which subjects bargain for constant and slowly decreasing pies, over 3 and 11 rounds with either constant or alternating offers....
Illusion of Expertise in Portfolio Decisions - An Experimental Approach -
Gerlinde Fellner, Werner Güth, Boris Maciejovsky
Overall, 72 subjects invest their endowment in four risky assets. Each combination of assets yields the same expected return and variance of returns. Illusion of expertise prevails when one prefers...
Overconfidence in Investment Decisions: An Experimental Approach
Dennis Dittrich, Werner Güth, Boris Maciejovsky
We experimentally test overconfidence in investment decisions by offering partic- ipants the possibility to substitute their own for alternative investment choices. Overall, 149 subjects participated...
Privately Contributing to Public Goods over Time - An Experimental Study -
Werner Güth, Maria Vittoria Levati, Andreas Stiehler
Similar to Levati and Neugebauer (2001), a clock is used by which participants can vary their individual contributions for voluntarily providing a public good. As time goes by, participants either...
Interpersonal allocation behavior in a household saving experiment
Vital Anderhuba, Werner Güth, Nadege Marchandd
We investigate the intertemporal allocation behavior of spouses with different deterministic life expectations in an experiment. In each period of their life both partners propose a consumption level...
Putting Limits to Emotional Behavior - An Ultimatum Experiment Varying Threat Efficiency
Ultimatum bargaining, fairness, punishment, emotions, threat efficiency
Speeding up Bureaucrats by Greasing Them - An Experimental Study -
Luis Gonzalez, Werner Güth, Maria Vittoria Levati
In the experiment two bureaucrats independently can grant a permit with the profit of the private party depending on when the permit is given. Whereas one bureaucrat can only veto the project, the...
The Coevolution of Morality and Legal Institutions - An indirect evolutionary approach -
Evolutionary game theory is often used to analyze the evolution of moral preferences. A few studies also examine the coevolution of preferences and an institutional aspect of the decision...
The Coevolution of Trust and Institutions in Anonymous and Non-anonymous Communities
We report on a research program that employs the indirect evolutionary approach to analyze how the institutional environment drives the evolution of trust and trustworthiness through the evolution of...
Noisy leadership: An experimental approach
Wieland Müller, Yossi Spiegel, Werner Güth
We examine the strategic behavior of leaders and followers in sequential duopoly experiments in which followers either perfectly observe the leaders’ actions or else observe nothing. Our...
I want YOU! An experiment studying the selection effect when assigning distributive power
Jordi Brandts, Werner Güth, Andreas Stiehler
We study whether selection affects motivation. In our experiment subjects first answer a personality questionnaire. They then play a 3-person game. One of the three players decides between an outside...
Are we nice(r) to nice(r) people? - An Experimental Analysis
Max Albert, Werner Güth, Erich Kirchler, Boris Maciejovsky
We experimentally investigate whether individuals can reliably detect cooperators in an anonymous decision environment by allowing participants to condition their choices in an asymmetric prisoner's...
Wie Du mir, so ich Dir! - Ökonomische Theorie und Experiment am Beispiel der Reziprozität
Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, Stefan Napel
Economists usually treat human behavior as being determined by the shadow of the future, while most other social scientists point to the shadow of the past. This paper considers experimental evidence...
Incentive Contracts versus Trust in Three-Person Ultimatum Games - An Experimental Study
Susanne Büchner, Luis Gonzalez, Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati
Whether incentive contracts perform better than trust in terms of productive efficiency is usually explored by principal-agent experiments (most involving only one agent). We investigate this issue...
Experimentelle Ökonomik, Modell-Platonismus in neuem Gewande?
Zusammenfassung: In diesem Beitrag lassen wir herkömmliche Kritikpunkte an der ökonomischen Neo-Klassik Revue passieren und untersuchen, inwieweit die heutige experimentelle Ökonomik diesen durch...
Inequality Aversion in a Variety of Games - An Indirect Evolutionary Analysis -
The indirect evolutionary approach integrates forward-looking evaluation of opportunities and adaptation in the light of the past. Subjective motivation determines behavior, but long-run evolutionary...
Siegfried Berninghaus, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
This paper focuses on the uneasy alliance of rational choice and evolutionary explanations in modern economics. While direct evolutionary explanations of "optimality" rule out "purposeful" rational...
Asymmetric Auction Experiments With(out) Commonly Known Beliefs
Werner Güth, Radosveta Ivanova-Stenzel
Are commonly known beliefs essential for bidding behavior in asymmetric auctions? Our experimental results suggest that not informing participants how values are randomly generated does not change...
Tax evasion and state productivity – An experimental study
Werner Güth, Sabine Strauß, Matthias Sutter
In an overlapping generations-experiment with multiple families participants can either support their parents directly and thereby reduce their tax burden or hope for tax-financed old age support....
NOW OR LATER? - An Analysis of the Timing of Threats in Bargaining
Siegfried K. Berninghaus, Werner Güth
The variable threat-bargaining model of Nash (1953) assumes that threats in the sense of binding commitments as to what one will do if bargaining ends in conflict, are chosen before bargaining. By...
Buying Versus Hiring - An Indirect Evolutionary Approach
Siegfried K. Berninghaus, Werner Güth
On an otherwise symmetric oligopoly market with stochastic demands for heterogeneous products firms can either hire an employee or partner or buy the required labor input on the labor market. Whereas...
Fairness Versus Efficiency - An Experimental Study of (Mutual) Gift Giving -
Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, Axel Ockenfels
Retributive responses do play a role in human behavior. Whether they are primarily triggered by supposed intentions or by observed consequences of actions is an important question. It can be...
Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, Axel Ockenfels
Retributive responses do play a role in human behavior. Whether they are primarily triggered by supposed intentions or by observed consequences of actions is an important question. It can be...
On the Inconsistency of Equilibrium Refinement
Consistency and optimality together with converse consistency provide an illuminating and novel characterization of the equilibrium concept (Peleg and Tijs, 1996). But (together with non-emptiness)...
Reasoning and Institutions: Do Markets Facilitate Logical Reasoning in the Wason Selection Task?
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Rupert Sausgruber
We consider a society composed of two regions. Each of them provides a public good whose benefits reach beyond local boundaries. In case of decentralization, taxes collected by members of a region...
Philosophical, Psychological and Economic Aspects of Choice Making
Hermann Brandstätter, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
This paper brings together views on choice making as have been developed in philosophy, psychology, and economics. Starting from specific examples the relative merits of different approaches are...
From Ultimatum to Nash Bargaining: Theory and Experimental Evidence
Sven Fischer, Werner Güth, Wieland Müller
We examine the strategic behavior of first and second movers in a two party bargaining game with uncertain information transmission. When the first mover states her demand she does only know the...
Reflections on Equilibrium - Ideal Rationality and Analytic Decomposition of Games
Siegfried Berninghaus, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
Taking seriously the philosophical foundations of classical strategic theories of choice-making we scrutinize to what extent planning on equilibrium strategies can be justified "eductively" among...
Ultimatum Offers and the Role of Transparency: An Experimental Study of Information Acquisition
Thomas Gehrig, Werner Güth, René Levínský
This paper analyses individual information acquisition in an ultimatum game with a-priori unknown outside options. We find that while individual play seems to accord reasonably well with the...
The commitment effect in belief evolution
Thomas Gehrig, Werner Güth, René Levínský
In this note we establish that rational demand expectations will typically not evolve in an evolutionary model. In an evolutionary model, beliefs act like a commitment device to more aggressive...
Evolution in Imperfect Commitment Bargaining – Strategic versus Ignorant Types -
Sven Fischer, Werner Güth, Kerstin Pull
To commit credibly in bargaining is crucial: In the ultimatum game with its one-sided early commitment power the “proposer” gets (nearly) the whole pie while the “responder” is left with...
Siegfried K. Berninghaus, Luis G. Gonzalez, Werner Güth
Two firms, each consisting of a team with the owner and just one employee, compete on the labor market with free labor mobility. After observing the investment decisions by firm owners their...
Werner Güth, Anthony ZIEGELMEYER, Loreto LLORENTE ERVITI
The common prior assumption asserts that the beliefs of agents in different states of the world are their posteriors based on a common prior and possibly some private signal. Common priors are...
The Consistency Axiom - An Experimental Study -
Luis G. Gonzalez, Werner Güth, Wiebke Kuklys
If a strict equilibrium is suggested as the solution of a strategic game in normal form and if some but not all players are committed to their solution strategy, a reduced game results with only the...
Bounded Rationality and Theory Absorption
In plausible theories of bounded rationality actors are not stimulus-response machines but human beings. As such they are guided by theories that predict the course of the world and prescribe how...
Leadership and cooperation in public goods experiments
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Matthias Sutter
Leadership is important for the well-functioning of organizations. We examine the effects of leadership on contributions in public goods experiments. Leadership by example is implemented by letting...
Relatives Versus Neighbors - An Experiment Studying Spontaneous Social Exchange -
Werner Güth, Vittoria Levati, Georg Von Wangenheim
Social institutions regulating group conduct have been regarded as necessary for human cooperation to transcend family bonds. However, many studies in economics and biology indicate that reciprocity...
Subjective payoffs that represent given preferences "all things considered" together with strictly uncommitted opportunity taking cannot account for the behavior of personal actors. It is shown how...
Conventions - Some Conventional and Some Not So Conventional Wisdom
Siegfried Berninghaus, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
In this paper we consider conventions as regularities in behavior which help to solve coordination problems in a society. These problems can be formalized as non-cooperative games with several...
Approximate Truth in Economic Modelling
Geoffrey Brennan, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
Economic intuitions concerning rational behaviour in interactive social situations are shaped by idealized models which are regarded as "approximately true". But ideal models cannot be meaningfully...
Loss aversion and learning to bid
Werner Güth, Martin Kocher, Paul Pezanis-Christou
Bidding challenges learning theories since experiences for the same bid vary stochastically: the same choice can result in a gain or a loss. In such an environment the question arises how the nearly...
Effective equity experiences from an ultimatum experiment
Fairness like other social norms is usually stabilized by punishing norm deviations. Reward uncertainty, however, questions whether norm deviations can be detected and thus punished. By investing in...
The Effect of Group Identity in an Investment Game
Werner Güth, Matteo Ploner, Vittoria Levati
The present research experimentally examines the influence of group identity on trust behavior in an investment game. In one treatment, group identity is manipulated only through the creation of...
Fair Wages and the Co-Employment of Hired and Rented Hands - An Experimental Study
Dorothea Alewell, Wiebke Kuklys, Colette Friedrich, Werner Güth
A firm with stochastic demand can rely on hired hands when demand is low and rent additional labour when demand is higher. For high demand this implies the co-employment of hired hands, paid directly...
Ben Greiner, Ro’i Zultan, Werner Güth
To explain why pre-play communication increases cooperation in games, one refers to a) strategic causes such as efficient communication or reputation effects, and b) changes in the utilities due to...
The impact of payoff interdependence on trust and trustworthiness
M. Vittoria Levati, Matteo Ploner, Werner Güth
In one-shot investment game experiments where each player's payoff is a convex combination of own and other's profit, trust remains unaffected by the extent of interdependence whereas trustworthiness...
Is Satisficing Absorbable? - An Experimental Study
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Matteo Ploner
We experimentally investigate whether the satisficing approach is absorbable, i.e., whether it still applies after participants become aware of it. In a setting where an investor decides between a...
Social Networks and Employment - An Experimental Analysis
Siegfried Berninghaus, Sven Fischer, Werner Güth
There is robust field data showing that a frequent and successful way of looking for a job is via the intermediation of friends and relatives. Here we want to explore this experimentally....
Satisficing in sales competition: experimental evidence
Siegfried Berninghaus, Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Jianying Qiu
In a stochastic duopoly market, sellers must form state-specific aspirations expressing how much they want to earn given their expectations about the other's behavior. We define individually and...
Leading by example with and without exclusion power in voluntary contribution experiments
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Matthias Sutter
We examine the effects of leading by example in voluntary contribution experiments. Leadership is implemented by letting one group member contribute to the public good before followers do. Such...
Werner Güth, Loreto Llorente Erviti, Anthony Ziegelmeyer
The common prior assumption justifies private beliefs as posterior probabilities when updating a common prior based on individual information. Common priors are pervasive in most economic models of...
Bereits im Jahre 1980 wählte Horst Albach einen spieltheoretischen und experimentellökonomischen Zugang zum Vertrauensproblem in der Ökonomik. Dieser Weg wird erneut beschritten. Es wird...
Dufwenberg, Martin, Güth, Werner
Two major methods of explaining economic institutions, namely by strategic choices or through (indirect) evolution, are compared for the case of a homogenous quadratic duopoly market. Sellers either...
On durable goods monopolies and the Coase-Conjecture
Consider the durable goods monopoly game with uniformly distributed consumers' valuations. To establish the Coase-Conjecture in this context takes an infinite time horizon and a negligible delay...
Durable-Goods Monopoly with Privately Known Impatience: A Theoretical and Experimental Study
Werner Güth, Sabine Kröger, Hans-Theo Normann
We analyze a durable-goods monopoly selling a single unit of a good to a buyer whose value of the good is private information. The discount factors of the buyer and the seller may differ and are also...
Attitudes toward private and collective risk in individual and strategic choice situations
Brennan, Geoffrey, González, Luis G., Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria
Idiosyncratic risk attitudes are usually assumed to be commonly known and related to own payoffs only. However, the alternatives faced by a decision maker often involve risk about others' payoffs as...
Though the social choice of social institutions or social results is impossible - there is, strictly speaking, no social choice - individual evaluations of social institutions or results trivially...
What Ethics Can Learn From Experimental Economics - If Anything
Relying on the specific example of ultimatum bargaining experiments this paper explores the possible role of empirical knowledge of behavioural "norm(ative) facts" within the search for an...
Social identity and trust--An experimental investigation
Güth, Werner, Levati, M. Vittoria, Ploner, Matteo
We experimentally examine how group identity affects trust behavior in an investment game. In one treatment, group identity is induced purely by minimal groups. In other treatments, group members are...
Spontaneous evolution of social exchange--An experimental study
Berninghaus, Siegfried K., Güth, Werner, Vogt, Bodo
Each of several exchange partners owns a specific commodity which she can share with others. Unlike in other social dilemma scenarios like prisoners' dilemma, public goods games, etc., voluntary...
Satisficing and prior-free optimality in price competition: a theoretical and experimental analysis
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levatia, Matteo Ploner
On a heterogeneous experimental oligopoly market, sellers choose a price, specify a set-valued prior-free conjecture about the others' behavior, and form their own profit-aspiration for each element...
Bribery and public procurement: an experimental study
Susanne Büchner, Andreas Freytag, Luis González, Werner Güth
Corruption, Procurement auctions,
Determinants of In-group Bias: Group Affiliation or Guilt-aversion?
Werner Güth, Matteo Ploner, Tobias Regner
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...
Being of two minds: an ultimatum experiment investigating affective processes
Dominique Cappellettia, Werner Güth, Matteo Ploner
We experimentally investigate how affective processes influence proposers' and responders' behaviour in the Ultimatum Game. Using a dual-system approach, we tax cognitive resources through time...
Prior-Free Optimality and Satisficing - A Common Framework and its Experimental Implementation -
Similar to welfare economics where with(out) interpersonal comparisons one defines unique (set-valued) welfare (Pareto) optima, we present a framework for one-person decision making where with(out) a...
Siegfried Berninghaus, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
This paper focuses on the uneasy alliance of rational choice and evolutionary explanations in modern economics. While direct evolutionary explanations rule out "purposeful" rational choice by...
Teleology, Trust, Information, Evolution, Social norms, C72, B52, B59,
Competition in Innovation and Imitation - A Theoretical and Experimental Study -
Uwe Cantner, Werner Güth, Andreas Nicklisch, Torsten Weiland
For given product specifications by two competing firms the demand levels are determined by a randomly generated ideal composition of aspects. Firms can vary some or all aspects of these products,...
Early or Late Conflict Settlement in a Variety of Games - An Experimental Study -
Vital Anderhub, Werner Güth, Nadège Marchand
The game theoretic prediction for alternating offer bargaining depends crucially on how "the pie'' changes over time, and whether the proposer in an early round has ultimatum power. We experimentally...
Decentralized or Collective Bargaining in a Strategy Experiment
Siegfried K. Berninghaus, Werner Güth, Claudia Keser
We present an experiment where two players bargain with a third player. They can bargain either separately or form a joint venture to bargain collectively. Our theoretical benchmark solution predicts...
Fair Wages and Multiple Fairness Standards – A Lab Study of Co-Employment of Hired and Rented Hands
Dorothea Alewell, Colette Friedrich, Werner Güth, Wiebke Kuklys
We study the relevance of fairness norms in an experimental scenario in which hired and rented hands are co-employed and stochastic influences and multiple reference points for fairness further...
Voting between tax regimes to fund a public good
Werner Güth, Rupert Sausgruber
Choice of tax regimes, Voting, Public goods, Experiments, C91, D7, H20, H41,
Satisficing in strategic environments: a theoretical approach and experimental evidence
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Matteo Ploner
The satisficing approach is generalized and applied to finite n-person games. Based on direct elicitation of aspirations, we formally define the concept of satisficing, which does not exclude...
Do investors optimize, follow heuristics, or listen to experts?
Thomas Gehrig, Werner Güth, Rene Levinsky, Vera Popova
In the experimental scenario several agents repeatedly invest in n (n >= 2) state-speciïfic assets. The evolutionarily stable and equilibrium (Blume and Easley, 1992) portfolio for this situation...
Downsizing the Labor Force by Low and High Proïfit Firms - An Experimental Analysis1
One may hope to capture the behavioral and emotional effects of downsizing the labor force in rather abstract settings as an ultimatum game (see Fischer et al. (2008)), or try to explore downsizing...
(Over-)Stylizing experimental findings and theorizing with sweeping generality
Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt, M. Vittoria Levatia
Human decision making is a process guided by different and partly competing motivations that can each dominate behavior and lead to different effects depending on strength and circumstances....
Hermann Brandstätter, Werner Güth, Hartmut Kliemt
During the last three decades the ascent of behavioral economics clearly helped to bring down artificial disciplinary boundaries between psychology and economics. Noting that behavioral economics...
Satisficing in sales competition: experimental evidence
Siegfried Berninghaus, Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Jianying Qiu
In a duopoly market, aspiration levels express how much sellers want to earn given their expectations about the other’s behavior. We augment the sellers’ decision task by eliciting their profit...
Lisa V. Bruttel, Werner Güth, Ulrich Kamecke, Vera Popova
Unlike previous attempts to implement cooperation in a prisoners' dilemma game with an infinite horizon in the laboratory, we focus on extended prisoners' dilemma games in which a second (pure...
Inconsistent Incomplete Information: A Betting Experiment
Werner Güth, Loreto Llorente Erviti, Anthony Ziegelmeyer
We study two person-betting games with inconsistent commonly know beliefs, using an experimental approach. In our experimental games, participants bet against one another, each bettor choosing one of...
How should we react to experiments that refute pure selfishness? Are deviations in action space only important if they imply considerable losses? For (un)bounded rationality it is unimportant which...
Beyond Procedural Equity and Reciprocity
Nadine Chlaß, Werner Güth, Topi Miettinen
Most research in economics models agents somehow motivated by outcomes. Here, we model agents motivated by procedures instead, where procedures are defined independently of an outcome. To that end,...
Beyond Procedural Fairness and Reciprocity
Chlass, Nadine, Güth, Werner, Miettinen, Topi
Most research in economics models agents somehow motivated by outcomes. Here, we model agents motivated by procedures instead, where procedures are defined independently of an outcome. To that end,...
Determinants of in-group bias: Is group affiliation mediated by guilt-aversion?
Güth, Werner, Ploner, Matteo, Regner, Tobias
In-group favoritism in social dilemma situations is one of Social Identity Theory's main findings. We investigate what causes the in-group bias: is it merely due to group affiliation or,...
Making the World a better Place: Experimental evidence from the generosity Game
Werner Güth, M. Vittoria Levati, Matteo Ploner
We study ultimatum and dictator experiments where the first mover chooses the amount of money to be distributed between the players within a given interval, knowing that her own share is ?xed. Thus,...
BUYING VERSUS HIRING-AN INDIRECT EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH
Siegfried K. Berninghaus, Werner Güth
On a symmetric homogeneous oligopoly market with stochastic demand, firms can either hire employees or buy their labor input on a competitive labor market. Whereas the wage of hired labor does not...
COMPETITION IN PRODUCT DESIGN: AN EXPERIMENT EXPLORING INNOVATION BEHAVIOR
Uwe Cantner, Werner Güth, Andreas Nicklisch, Torsten Weiland
We experimentally investigate competition for innovations in a patent race scenario. Pairs of subjects compete as seller firms on a duopoly market, investing in risky search. Successful innovations...
Siegfried Berninghaus, Sabrina Bleich, Werner Güth
If the future market wage is uncertain, engaging in long-term employment is risky, with the risk depending on how regulated the labor market is. In our experiment long-term employment can result...