Introduction

Abstract

In some social sciences laboratory experiments have a long tradition. Compared with, for example, psychology experimental economics started lately but has experienced a steadily increasing attention by the economic profession in the last years. Apparently experiments open up a promising gate to generate and evaluate behavioral hypotheses particularly for economic problems, too. In fact, the experimental approach in economics has taken the lead concerning questions of personal and joint decision making. Not surprisingly for many economists, however, the experimental evidence in a number of cases has been inconsistent with the well-known theoretical claims of standard economics, particularly of game theory. This has raised the fundamental problem of how to deal with an empirical evidence which is - at least partly - conflicting with established theoretical results.