Market exchange involves many cognitive and non-cognitive processes — e.g., search, inference, prediction, negotiation. Much attention has been devoted to these issues both in theory and in experimental economics. I focus on the enforcement of market transactions against opportunistic behavior. I first discuss the different mechanisms that can deter opportunistic breach of contract. Some of the...

We argue that social institutions emerge on the basis of the human cognitive ability to integrate an evaluation of the behavior and performances of other group members over long time periods. The results of those evaluations are condensed into the social status of an individual, and that status is the link between short time achievements and long term success within the group. Altruistic behavi...

In this article we argue that open agent organisations can be effectively designed and implemented as institutionalized electronic organisations ('electronic institutions') composed of a vast amount of heterogeneous (human and software) agents playing different roles and interacting by means of speech acts. Here we take the view that the desing and development of electronic institutions must be...

Common-pool resources create a well known social dilemma, and to solve the problem the recent literature in economics has focused on how repeated interaction can promote informal cooperation without the need for formal legal or political institutions. This paper examines a particular example of a common resource: common property in alpine communities of Northern Italy between the 13th and the 1...

Current approaches examining the effect of institutions on policy processes have difficulty in explaining the results of the legislative process of codecision between European Parliament and Council within the European Union. The formal Treaty changes which gave rise to codecision have in turn given rise to a plethora of informal institutions, in a process which is difficult to understand using...