Essays in behavioral and experimental economics [Elektronische Ressource] / vorgelegt von Peter Dürsch

Essays in Behavioral and Experimental Economics DISSERTATION ZUR ERLANGUNG DES AKADEMISCHEN GRADES DOCTOR RERUM POLITICARUM AN DER FAKULTÄT FÜR WIRTSCHAFTS- UND SOZIALWISSENSCHAFTEN DER RUPRECHT-KARLS-UNIVERSITÄT HEIDELBERG VORGELEGT VON Peter Dürsch HEIDELBERG, OKTOBER 2010 Table of contents Introduction 2 Chapter I. Rage Against the Machines: How Subjects Play against Learning Algorithms 5 Chapter II. Taking Punishment Into Your Own Hands: An Experiment on the Motivation Underlying Punishment 36 Chapter III. Punishment with Uncertain Outcomes in the Prisoner’s Dilemma 58 Chapter IV. (No) Punishment in the One-Shot Prisoner’s Dilemma 80 1 Introduction Behavioral and experimental economics are two relatively recent and closely related fields in economics. Experimeics adds experiments as a method of research to theoretical modeling, empirical analysis of real world data and simulations. This method is not specific to any field of economics, and experiments have been used for a long time, but it is in connection with behavioral economics that experiments have become more refined and often used. Behavioral economics relaxes two important assumptions that are at the core of almost all economic modeling: That humans are rational and selfish (money maximizing).