This paper studies the evolution of both characteristics of reciprocity - the willingness to reward friendly behavior and the willingness to punish hostile behavior. Firstly, preferences for rewarding as well as preferences for punishing can survive evolution provided individuals interact within...

I study the incentives of Cournot duopolists to share their technologies with their competitor in markets where intellectual property rights are absent and imitation is costless. The trade-off between a signaling effect and an expropriation effect determines the technology-sharing incentives. In...

Early studies often found that offering economic incentives for undertaking prosocial and intrinsically motivated activities can crowd out motivation to perform these activities. More recent work highlights nuanced and important features related to whether crowding out (or substitution) is...

We examine two types of altruism and their implications for voluntary giving. Philanthropists are altruists who wish to enhance the well-being of others, while individuals with merit-good preferences only wish to further the consumption of certain merit goods by others. Philanthropic donors...

We investigate a setting in which members of a population, bifurcated into a majority and a minority, transact with randomly matched partners. All members are uniformly altruistic, and each transaction can be carried out cooperatively or through a market mechanism, with cooperative transactions...

This study analyzes the stability of preferences through the lens of psychological motives. We report the results of a public goods experiment in which subjects were induced with the motives of Care and Anger through autobiographical recall. Subjects' preferences, beliefs, and perceptions under...

We use a range of dictator game experiments to investigate whether people avoid information altruistically. After learning about a product with positive externalities, a consumer may avoid learning the cost of the product so that she does not hesitate to act altruistically. We find that although...

Both theory and recent empirical evidence on nudging suggest that observability of behavior acts as an instrument for promoting (discouraging) pro-social (anti-social) behavior. Our study questions the universality of these claims. We employ a novel four-party setup to disentangle the roles that...

How do families behave dynamically? We provide a framework for studying economic problems in which family behavior is essential. Our key innovation is the inclusion of imperfectly altruistic agents in an otherwise standard consumption-savings problem with exogenous income risk. This gives rise...

There is now an extensive literature on "gift exchange" showing that when principals and agents can trade "gifts" (rewards that should not emerge in a competitive equilibrium), exchange becomes more efficient. However, it is not obvious how gift exchange should be organized if the principal's...