In contrast to previous studies on cross-group comparisons of conditional cooperation, this study keeps cross- and within-country dimensions constant. The results reveal significantly different cooperation behavior between social groups in the same location.<p>

This paper derives Pareto efficient policy rules for the provision of national as well as global public goods in a two-country world, where each individual cares about relative consumption within as well as between countries. Furthermore, we compare these policy rules with those that follow from...

Previous studies on public policy under relative consumption concerns have ignored the role of leisure comparisons. This paper considers a two-type optimal nonlinear income tax model where people care both about their relative consumption and their relative leisure. Increased consumption...

This paper concerns optimal income taxation and provision of a state-variable public good under asymmetric information in a two-type overlapping generations model, where people care about their relative consumption. Each individual may compare his/her own current consumption with his/her own...

Almost all previous studies on public policy under relative consumption concerns have ignored the role of leisure for status comparisons. Inspired by Veblen (1899), this paper considers a two-type optimal income tax model, where people care about their relative consumption, and where the...

We show that peer sanctioning increases cooperation in public goods experiments more in unequally endowed groups than in equally endowed groups. Punishment results in a redistribution of wealth from high to low endowment players within groups. <p>

Since the analysis of a self-enforcing agreement by Barrett (1994) it has been clear that the ratio between the slopes of the marginal cost and marginal benefit functions is conclusive for stability of self-enforcing agreements. For example Finus and Rundshagen (1998) stated: 'it turns out that...

Kaplow (1996) and others argue forcefully in favor of using the standard cost-benefit test alone, without any distributional concern, given “standard simplifying assumptions.” This paper, on the contrary, demonstrates that distributional weights, equal to the social marginal utility of...

The Kyoto summit initiated an international game of cap and trade. Unlike a national policy, the essence of this game is the self-selection of national emission targets. This differs from the standard global public-goods game because targets are met in the context of a global carbon market. This...

Global cap and trade equalizes the price of emissions and leads to efficient abatement across countries, but sets the abatement level inefficiently low. It is set too low, because the global cap is the sum of individual country targets set on the basis of self-interest. The efficiency of a...