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Trust and trustworthiness are important components of social capital and much attention has been devoted to their correct evaluation. In this paper, we argue that individuals' trust and trustworthiness are strongly dependent on the level of trust and trustworthiness of the social group in which subjects operate. Attitudinal indicators which are often used to measure trust and trustworthiness in economic and sociological studies are proxies of the individual's propensity to trust, but are insufficient measures of the effective level of trust since the latter may be strongly affected by the behaviour of the components of the individuals' social groups. In order to test our hypothesis, we use a rich dataset based on two experiments on the Trust Game (Berg et al.; 1995), where subjects also filled a questionnaire containing the main attitudinal questions the EVS (the European Value Survey) uses to measure individuals' trust. We then compare the ex-ante behavioural and attitudinal measures of trust with the ex post relative measures. Our main finding is that trust strongly varies once the individual is informed on the on the level of trustworthiness of the social group to which he\she has been allocated during the experiment. This difference is higher the higher is the family level of income and the parental education status of the subjects. We also find that relative behavioural measures are not correlated to attitudinal measures (Glaeser et al., 2000, Lazzarini, 2005), but they are strongly correlated to groups' trustworthiness. We also find that similar social preferences profiles (between Senders and Recipients) tend to enhance the degree of behavioural trust.

In this paper we study the aggregate behaviour of subjects who participated in two well-known ex-periments (Holt, 1985; Fouraker-Seigel, 1963) on oligopoly markets, and we analyse whether it is possible to explain such behaviour on the basis of Evolutionary Game Theory. For this purpose, we compare the simulated results of a generalised version of the "Replicator Dynamics" model with the evolution of strategies selected by participants during the experiments. The evolutionary model predicts, in the presence of noise, a dynamic equilibrium which does not correspond to the Cournot outcome but is closer to Collusion. Our work shows that the "Replicator Dynamics" describes the individual behaviour better than the models of rationality originally tested in the experiments. Furthermore, our results suggest that collusive outcomes might be considered as a possible consequence of the strategic interaction in oligopoly markets if we introduce the concept of bounded rationality adopted in the evolutionary models.

This paper reports the results of an experimental investigation which allows a deeper insight into the nature of social preferences amongst organized criminals and how these differ from "ordinary" criminals on the one hand and from the non‐criminal population in the same geographical area on the other. We provide experimental evidence on cooperation and response to sanctions by running Prisoner's Dilemma and Third Party Punishment games on three different pools of subjects; students, 'Ordinary Criminals' and Camorristi (Neapolitan 'Mafiosi'). The latter two groups being recruited from within prisons. We are thus able to separately identify 'Prison' and 'Camorra' effects. Camorra prisoners show a high degree of cooperativeness and a strong tendency to punish, as well as a clear rejection of the imposition of external rules even at significant cost to themselves. In contrast, ordinary criminals behave in a much more opportunistic fashion, displaying lower levels of cooperation and, in the game with Third Party punishment, punishing less as well as tending to punish cooperation (almost as much) as defection. Our econometric analyses further enriches the analysis demonstrating inter alia that individuals' locus of control and reciprocity are associated with quite different and opposing behaviours amongst different participant types; a strong sense of self‐determination and reciprocity both imply a higher propensity to cooperate and to punish for both students and Camorra inmates, but quite the opposite for ordinary criminals, further reinforcing the contrast between the behaviour of ordinary criminals and the strong internal mores of Camorra clans.

In this paper we report the results of two experiments, each one comprising two designs (a prisoner dilemma and a third party punishment; Fehr et al., 2004), conducted with a sample of University students and a sample of Camorra prison inmates, both coming from the same Italian region (Campania). Our research hypothesis is that there are consistent differences in cooperative and sanctioning behaviour between the two samples, though they come from very similar economic and cultural backgrounds. The presence of these differences would justify the claim that economic analyses of crime must be integrated with a behavioural perspective. The results of the experiments fully support our research hypothesis, as we find substantial differences between the two samples.

In Third Party punishment experiments (Fehr et al.; 2004), an agent may be punished for violating a social norm by an uninvolved observer - or third party - whose payoff is unaffected by the behavior of the same agent. In our research, we attempt to improve the understanding of Third Party punishment by reproducing an experiment conducted by Fehr et al. 2004 (TP-PD) with a sample of Camorra prison inmates. We then compare the decisions of the Camorra inmates with the behavior of university students with similar social and economic backgrounds. Our primary conclusion is that there are significant differences in cooperative and sanctioning behavior.

In this paper we explore the relationship between the individual’s preference for cooperation and the establishment of cooperative norms. Our aim is to provide an experimental test of the evolutionary hypothesis (see Carpenter, 2004, Fehr and Gachter 2002; Gintis 2000; Boyd, Bowles, Gintis and Richerson 2003; Bowles and Gintis 2004), according to which individuals are prepared to punish defectors in experimental social dilemma games because they want to enforce a social (“altruistic”) norm which may conduce to increasing their future payoffs, as in the case of sanctions against free riding behaviour. According to this line of research , the high levels of cooperation we observe in our societies can, therefore, be strictly related to the establishment of social norms which are able to enforce and maintain cooperation in the long run. We study the results of two experiments in which the individuals decided both whether to participate in a common project and the institutional rule according to which the profits of the project had to be shared among each of the participants in the group.

The main scope of the research was to test whether there were significant differences between attitudinal self reported measures of trust and behavioural measures of trust, as derived by the results of the experimental games.

Cooperation is a pervasive social phenomenon, but more often than not economic theories have little to say about its causes and consequences. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that cooperative behaviour might be motivated by pure self-interest when the “social” payoff in a game is increasing. We report the results of a series of experiments on the Centipede game. The experiments are organised in two subsequent steps. Subjects first participate in a 2-period trust game, randomly matched with unknown partners. We apply the strategy method in order to elicit their social preferences. On the basis of their pre-game behaviour, individuals are divided into three main social groups: selfish individuals, pure altruists and reciprocators. At the second step of the experiment, subjects play a repeated 6-move Centipede game with an increasing final payoff. Each subject plays twice, in a low and in a high-stake Centipede game, and he/she is informed about his/her co-player social preferences. We provide statistical evidence to identify the origin of cooperation within homogeneous and heterogeneous social groups. We construct a Poisson regression model to assess the determinants of the duration of conditional cooperation in the Centipede.

The paper considers a simple oligopoly model where firms know their own and the average pay-off in the industry. Firms choose decision rules for trading. The theory predicts that there are three types of Nash-equilibria in this game (Collusive, Cournot and Stackelberg). Our experiments test the selection process. We find that there is clear evidence of convergence to an equilibrium, and whilst both Cournot and Collusive outcomes were selected, the Collusive equilibrium is more common. The experimental results give also insights on the process of individual learning, confirming that subjects follow aspiration rules rather than reinforcement rules.

The aim of our experiments is to test the effect of different information settings on firms’ behaviour in duopoly price and quantity games. We find that, when players have full information on their rivals’ choices, the imitation rule prevails and such learning behaviour induces more competitive outcomes in the Cournot market designs. By the same token, when information on the average industrial profit is provided, there is evidence of an increase in cooperation, and the majority of players experiment with new strategies when their payoff falls below the average profit (F. Palomino and F. Vega-Redondo, 1999; H. Dixon, 2000)

In Third Party punishment experiments (Fehr et al.; 2004), an agent may be punished for violating a social norm by an uninvolved observer - or third party - whose payoff is unaffected by the behavior of the same agent. In our research, we attempt to improve the understanding of Third Party punishment by reproducing an experiment conducted by Fehr et al. 2004 (TP-PD) with a sample of Camorra prison inmates. We then compare the decisions of the Camorra inmates with the behavior of university students with similar social and economic backgrounds. Our primary conclusion is that there are significant differences in cooperative and sanctioning behavior.

Value Surveys may reveal well-behaved societies by the statistical treatment of the agents' declarations of compliance with social values. Similarly, the results of experiments conducted on games with conflict of interest trace back to two important primitives of social capital - trust and reciprocity - which can be used to explain deviations from the Nash equilibrium and which lead to the optimal cooperative outcome. In this paper we attempt to elicit the true motive(s) underlying the behaviour of players in experimental trust and dictator games and suggest that the most informative utilization of surveys in this regard goes beyond the simple comparison of answers to a questionnaire with actual behaviour. Specifically the paper uses descriptive statistics and ordered probit models to analyse whether, and to what extent, answers to a questionnaire about attitudes to trusting and reciprocating predict subjects' behaviour and, by comparing behaviour in Trust and Dictator Game, disentangles the strategic and altruistic motivations. We find no simple or direct correlation between behavioural trust or trustworthiness and attitudinal trust or disposition to reciprocate. However, dividing subjects according to attitudinal trust and trustworthiness, we observe that the link between the questionnaire and experimental sessions is more subtle than the mere correlation between average attitudes and average behaviours. The information conveyed by a survey appears to be much more powerful ex post - once the two motivational components have been separated out.

Cooperation is a pervasive social phenomenon but more often than not economic theories have little to say about its causes and consequences. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that cooperative behaviour might be motivated by purely selfish interest when the “social” payoff in a game is increasing. We report the results of a series of experiments on the centipede game. The experiments are organized in two subsequent steps. Subjects first participate in a 2-period trust game, randomly matched with unknown partners. We apply the strategy method in order to elicit their social preferences. On the basis of their pre-game behaviour, individuals are divided into three main social groups: selfish individuals, pure altruists and reciprocators. At the second step of the experiment, subjects play a repeated 6-move centipede game with increasing final payoff. Each subject plays twice in a low stake and in a high centipede game, and he/she is informed about his/her co-player social preferences. We identify the origin of cooperation within homogeneous and heterogeneous social groups.

iN THIS PAPER WE PRESENT DOUBLE-AUCTION AND POSTED OFFER EXPERIMENTS IN WHICH SOME LOW-COST SELLES HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY OF EXERCISING MARKET POWER BY WITHOLDING UNITS FOR SALE THUS INCREASING THE MARKET PRICE. We propose the combined use of accelerted decay and asymptotic root modelswhich allow us to discriminate between competitive and non competitive behavior,and, for non competitive behavior, between tacit collusion and unilateral market power. Our analysis confirms the existence of unilateral market power and tacit collusion in posted offer markets but the same hypothesis is rejected in the four double auction experiments.

In this paper we use a unique firms' databse on R&D investment and we test whether firms' size and industrial concentration are beneficial to innovative activity and whether such benefits are greater for large or small firms located in the same industry