TY  - RPRT
A1  - Andres, Maximilian
A1  - Bruttel, Lisa
T1  - Communicating Cartel Intentions
T2  - CEPA Discussion Papers
N2  - While the economic harm of cartels is caused by their price-increasing effect, sanctioning by courts rather targets at the underlying process of firms reaching a price-fixing agreement. This paper provides experimental evidence on the question whether such sanctioning meets the economic target, i.e., whether evidence of a collusive meeting of the firms and of the content of their communication reliably predicts subsequent prices. We find that already the mere mutual agreement to meet predicts a strong increase in prices. Conversely, express distancing from communication completely nullifies its otherwise price-increasing effect. Using machine learning, we show that communication only increases prices if it is very explicit about how the cartel plans to behave.
T3  - CEPA Discussion Papers - 77 
KW  - cartel
KW  - collusion
KW  - communication
KW  - machine learning
KW  - experiment
Y1  - 2024
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-638469
SN  - 2628-653X
IS  - 77
ER  - 
TY  - RPRT
A1  - Bruttel, Lisa Verena
A1  - Petrishcheva, Vasilisa
T1  - Does communication increase the precision of beliefs?
T2  - CEPA Discussion Papers
N2  - In this paper, we study one channel through which communication may facilitate cooperative behavior – belief precision. In a prisoner’s dilemma experiment, we show that communication not only makes individuals more optimistic that their partner will cooperate but also increases the precision of this belief, thereby reducing strategic uncertainty. To disentangle the shift in mean beliefs from the increase in precision, we elicit beliefs and precision in a two-stage procedure and in three situations: without communication, before communication, and after communication. We find that the precision of beliefs increases during communication.
T3  - CEPA Discussion Papers - 74 
KW  - prisoner’s dilemma
KW  - communication
KW  - beliefs
KW  - strategic uncertainty
KW  - experiment
Y1  - 2024
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-629367
SN  - 2628-653X
IS  - 74
SP  - 1
EP  - 33
ER  - 
TY  - RPRT
A1  - Bruttel, Lisa Verena
A1  - Eisenkopf, Gerald
A1  - Nithammer, Juri
T1  - Pre-election communication in public good games with endogenous leaders
T2  - CEPA Discussion Papers
N2  - Leadership plays an important role for the efficient and fair solution of social dilemmas but the effectiveness of a leader can vary substantially. Two main factors of leadership impact are the ability to induce high contributions by all group members and the (expected) fair use of power. Participants in our experiment decide about contributions to a public good. After all contributions are made, the leader can choose how much of the joint earnings to assign to herself; the remainder is distributed equally among the followers. Using machine learning techniques, we study whether the content of initial open statements by the group members predicts their behavior as a leader and whether groups are able to identify such clues and endogenously appoint a “good” leader to solve the dilemma. We find that leaders who promise fairness are more likely to behave fairly, and that followers appoint as leaders those who write more explicitly about fairness and efficiency. However, in their contribution decision, followers focus on the leader’s first-move contribution and place less importance on the content of the leader’s statements.
T3  - CEPA Discussion Papers - 73 
KW  - leadership
KW  - public good
KW  - voting
KW  - experiment
KW  - promises
Y1  - 2024
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:kobv:517-opus4-623952
SN  - 2628-653X
IS  - 73
ER  -