Abstract not found

An important question facing experimental economists is whether behavior inside the laboratory is a good indicator of behavior outside the laboratory. We begin with a model that assumes the choices that individuals make depend not just on financial implications, but also on the nature and extent of scrutiny by others, the particular context in which a decision is embedded, and the manner in which participants are selected. To the extent that lab and naturally-occurring environments systematically differ on any of these dimensions, the results obtained inside and outside the lab need not correspond. Based on theory and empirical evidence, we argue that lab experiments are a useful tool for generating qualitative insights, but are not well-suited for obtaining deep structural parameter estimates. We conclude that the sharp dichotomy sometimes drawn between lab experiments and data generated in natural settings is a false one. Each approach has strengths and weaknesses, and a combination of the two is likely to provide deeper insights than either in isolation.

We study indirect reciprocity and strategic reputation building in an experimental helping game. At any time only half of the subjects can build a reputation. This allows us to study both pure indirect reciprocity that is not contaminated by strategic reputation building and the impact of incentives for strategic reputation building on the helping rate. We find that while pure indirect reciprocity appears to be important, the helping choice seems to be influenced at least as much by strategic considerations. Strategic do better than non-strategic players and non-reciprocal do better than reciprocal players, casting doubt on previously proposed evolutionary explanations for indirect reciprocity.

The amount of institutional intervention necessary to secure efficiency-enhancing cooperation in markets and organizations, in circumstances where interactions take place among essentially strangers, depends critically on the amount of information informal reputation mechanisms need transmit. Models based on subgame perfection find that the information necessary to support cooperation is recursive in nature and thus information generating and processing requirements are quite demanding. Models that do not rely on subgame perfection, on the other hand, suggest that the information demands may be quite modest. The experiment we present indicates that even without any reputation information there is a non-negligible amount of cooperation that is, however, quite sensitive to the cooperation costs. For high costs, providing information about a partner’s immediate past action increases cooperation. Recursive information about the partners’ previous partners’ reputation further promotes cooperation, regardless of the cooperation costs.

The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, a Research Centre based at the University of Bristol, was established in 1998. The principal aim of the CMPO is to develop understanding of the design of activities within the public sector, on the boundary of the state and within recently privatised entities with the objective of developing research in, and assessing and informing policy toward, these activities. Centre for Market and Public Organisation

commitment, conscientiousness, costly signaling theory, equilibrium selection, emotion, empathy, ethics, evolutionary psychology, fitness indicators, genetic correlations, good genes, good parents, good partners, human courtship, kin selection, kindness, individual differences, intelligence, mate choice, mental health, moral virtues, mutation load, mutual choice, person perception, personality, reciprocal altruism, sexual fidelity, sexual selection, social cognition, virtue ethics “Human good turns out to be the activity of the soul exhibiting excellence.” Aristotle (350 BC) Moral evolution theories have emphasized kinship, reciprocity, group selection, and equilibrium selection. Yet, moral virtues are also sexually attractive. Darwin suggested that sexual attractiveness may explain many aspects of human morality. This paper updates his argument by integrating recent research on mate choice, person perception, individual differences, costly signaling, and virtue ethics. Many human virtues may have evolved in both sexes through mutual mate choice to advertise good genetic quality, parenting abilities, and/or partner traits. Such virtues may include kindness, fidelity, magnanimity, and heroism, as well as quasi-moral traits like conscientiousness, agreeableness, mental health, and intelligence. This theory leads to many testable predictions about the phenotypic features, genetic bases, and social-cognitive responses to human moral virtues. A

A cyclical network of indirect reciprocity is derived organizing 3- or 6-person groups into rings of social interaction where the first individual can help the second, the second the third, and so on till the last, who in return can help the first. Mutual cooperation is triggered by assuming that what one passes on to the next is multiplied by a factor of 3. Participants play repeatedly either in a partner or in a stranger condition, and take their decisions first simultaneously and then sequentially. We find that pure indirect reciprocity enables mutual cooperation although strategic considerations and group size are important too.

Structured peer-to-peer systems allow to administer large volumes of data. Several peers collaborate to generate a query result. Analyses of unstructured peer-to-peer systems, namely of those for file-sharing, show that peers tend to shirk collaboration. We anticipate similar behavior in structured peer-to-peer systems. Recently, protocols to counter uncooperative behavior in such systems have been proposed. This article examines the behavior of peers under such protocols, using game theory. A first result of this paper is a set of hypotheses, e.g.: Peers answer queries if more than a certain percentage of their queries is answered. In many situations, free-riding does not lead to a break-down of the system. Trust, reciprocity and reputation building via a feedback mechanism are behavioral motives that increase cooperation. As a second step, we have conducted economic experiments with human participants to validate our predictions. Such experiments are important because we do not need to make any assumptions regarding the behavior of peers. It turns out that the predictions remain valid in these experiments. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.1.2 [Information Systems]: Models and principles – human factors, human information processing; H.3.4 [Information Systems]:

Abstract not found

This paper explores how information about paired subject's previous action affects one's own behavior in a dictator game. The first experiment puts dictators in two environments where they can either give money to the paired player or take money away from them: one where the recipient is a stranger and the other where the dictator has information on the recipient's reputation. Contrary to anecdotal evidence, the statistical tests show that the dictator's behavior toward a stranger is not statistically significantly different from their behavior toward an individual with an established reputation. The findings arise because a high proportion of dictators acted purely in their own self interest in both treatments. In the second experiment the dictators' choices were restricted to only generous actions. In such environment the dictators sent more money on average to recipients with a reputation for being generous than to recipients without a reputation.