This document outlines the ethical standards required for experiments conducted at and under the auspices of the Center for Experimental Economics at Luiss Guido Carli (CESARE) in Rome. Researchers conducting experiments at CESARE must sign their agreement using this form and submit a copy to the Center's Director. If an investigator feels unable to sign their agreement using this form—perhaps because they are conducting different types of experiments—they must request special permission.

General Principles

Experiments conducted at CESARE LAB must adhere to the following rules.

1. Purpose of the experiments

Experiments should be conducted for scientific reasons, typically to test economic theories under controlled laboratory conditions. The ultimate goal is to publish articles in scientific journals.

2. Person in charge of the experiment

For each experiment, the person in charge should be explicitly named to the Director of CESARE (who must approve the experiment) and must sign their consent. He or she will be held responsible for any violation of these rules.

3. Voluntary participation

Subjects in the experiments should participate voluntarily and without receiving any compensation. Subjects will be invited to participate in an experiment via an email sent by the ORSEE system (see below) to individuals who have voluntarily registered in the database. All registrants have the right to decline any invitation to any experiment, and they are aware of this. When participants take part in an experiment and are paid, the receipt form they are asked to sign will also include a statement confirming their voluntary participation. Individuals registered in the ORSEE database are recruited via email. After participating in any experiment, subjects will be asked to sign a form stating that they participated voluntarily. This form also serves as a receipt for any payment they received.

4. The tasks involved

The tasks that subjects will be asked to do will not require any physically stressful manual effort and will not impose any physical or mental pain or suffering on the subjects. Usually, experiments involve subjects sitting at a computer terminal and responding to problems of an economic nature, though some experiments will require subjects to answer a non-computerized questionnaire by filling out a form. There will be no attempt to physically measure the subjects’ physical or mental state; no medical intervention of any kind will be used.

The tasks participants will be asked to perform will not involve any physically demanding manual effort and will not cause them any physical or mental pain. Typically, experiments involve participants sitting in front of a computer and solving economic problems. However, some experiments require participants to answer a non-computerized questionnaire, i.e., by filling out a form. There will be no attempt to measure the subjects' physical or mental state, nor will any type of medical intervention be performed.

5. Duration of the experiment

In the invitation to the experiment, participants will be informed of the expected duration, which is typically less than two hours.

6. Payment

Participants will be informed about how they will be compensated for taking part in the experiment. Typically, payment will be in cash and will be made at the end of the experimental session. Often, participants will receive a participation fee regardless of their performance. Additionally, there will typically be an extra payment based on the subjects' performance in the experiment, the performance of other participants in the experimental session, and often a random factor. Any random factors will be explained to the participants, and any randomization devices will be transparently disclosed. There will be no manipulation of any randomization devices (other than the seeding of a random number generator), and no experimenter will fraudulently or deceptively reduce any participant's payment. If a participant wishes to leave the experiment before the session is completed, they will be allowed to do so, and their payment will be the attendance fee communicated to them at the start of the experiment. Subjects will be asked to sign a CESARE receipt (see below) for any payment they receive, and these receipts will be the responsibility of the investigator in charge of the experiment. These receipts will not be linked in any way to the experiment data and will not be used in any publication in a manner that could identify individual participants.

7. Confidentiality

While participants will be recruited using the ORSEE (Online System for the Recruitment of Subjects in Experimental Economics) system from a database of potential participants (which identifies participants and their contact details), and while the experiment data (including participants' performance in an experiment for which they volunteered, and potentially their questionnaire responses) will be recorded in a database, the two databases (the ORSEE database and the experiment database) will never be used together. Only the experiment data will be published (and not the ORSEE data). This ensures that the published data remains anonymous and that no individual can be identified from the published results. This will ensure confidentiality.

8. Clarity

All participants will receive clear, written instructions outlining what they are asked to do in the experiment. Although they won't be told the experiment's purpose (in a scientific sense), the subjects won't be deceived. If any participant has questions about the experiment, except those concerning its scientific purpose, they will receive a transparent answer. If a subject wishes to leave at any point during the experiment, they are free to do so and will receive the participation fee specified in the experiment announcement. Generally, they will not be entitled to any further payment if they do not complete the experiment, regardless of the time spent in the laboratory.

9. Complaints

Subjects who believe they have been treated unfairly in any experiment will be referred to the Director of CESARE, who will investigate the complaint. CESARE members will fully cooperate with any such investigation.

10. Removal from the experiment

The experimenter reserves the right to exclude or reject any subject from the experiment if the subject does not follow the experiment's rules. This can happen, for example, if a subject is disruptive or communicates with other subjects (or people outside the laboratory) when the rules clearly state they shouldn't. In these circumstances, the presentation fee may not be due.

11. Additional information provided to participants

Sometimes participants ask for additional information, usually about the experiment's purpose, which the experimenters are reluctant to provide until all sessions for a particular experiment are complete. This is to prevent the first subjects from changing the behavior of subsequent subjects, which could undermine the experiment's purpose. The experimenters reserve the right to withhold such information until the end of the experimental sessions and to provide only the information that is relevant for the subjects to complete their experimental session. However, once the data has been analyzed and the experiment's results have been written up, the resulting articles and data are expected to be made public and available to everyone.

12. Experiment data

Most journals now require that all data used in a published article be made publicly available to everyone. The data from CESARE experiments will adhere to this rule, but it will be made available in a manner that preserves anonymity.

13. At the end of each academic year, CESARE will prepare an annual report for the Vice-Rector for Research. This report will detail the number of experiments and participants, their topics, and highlight any issues or problems that have arisen.

Ethics Committee

<p >Prof. Massimo Egidi (Luiss), 
Prof. Leonardo Morlino (Luiss), 
Prof. Werner Gueth (Luiss and Max Planck Institute), 
Prof. Glenn Harrison (Georgia State University), 
Prof. Elisabeth Rutstrom (J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University)

PDF copy of the Code of Ethics to be signed for access to the Laboratory

To gain access to the Laboratory, you must send a signed copy of the Code of Ethics to the Center Director and request authorization from Daniela Di Cagno, Irene Maria Buso or Lorenzo Spadoni. Reservations and participant management are handled through the ORSEE system.