This paper studies a collective decision problem in which a group of individuals with interdependent preferences vote whether or not to implement a public project of unknown value. A utilitarian social planner aggregates these votes according to a majority rule; but, unlike what is commonly...

We investigate how group boundaries, and the economic environment surrounding groups, affect altruistic cooperation and punishment behavior. Our study uses experiments conducted with 525 officers in the Swiss Army, and exploits random assignment to platoons. We find that, without competition...

Scandals involving nonprofit boards and conflicts of interest continue to receive considerable public attention. Last month, for example, Wyclef Jean's Yele Haiti charity became the target of intense criticism after the charity disclosed that it had regularly transacted business with Jean and...

In an earlier paper (Blinder and Morgan, 2005), we created an experimental apparatus in which Princeton University students acted as ersatz central bankers, making monetary policy decisions both as individuals and in groups. In this study, we manipulate the size and leadership structure of...

The C case describes Tom Stark's state of mind after his meeting with the OSIM Group's chairman of the board. See also the A, B, D, E, F, and G cases (UVA-BP-0399, UVA-BP-0400, and UVA-BP-0402 through UVA-BP-0405)

Stochastic dominance permits a partial ordering of alternatives (probability distributions on consequences) based only on partial information about a decision maker's utility function. Univariate stochastic dominance has been widely studied and applied, with general agreement on classes of...