We conduct a study of altruistic behavior among high school students using the dictator game. We find a much stronger norm of equal splitting than previously observed in the typical university student population, with almost 45% of high school subjects choosing an equal split of the endowment....

A rebate subsidy of rate sr is functionally equivalent to a matching subsidy of rate sm=sr/(1−sr). Other things equal, an individual should respond identically to the two subsidies. We test the effect on charitable giving of the framing of a subsidy as a rebate or as a match. Subjects make a...

Charities operate at different levels: national, state, or local. We test the effect of the level of the organization on charitable giving in a sample of adults in two Texas communities. Subjects make four charitable giving "dictator game" decisions from a fixed amount of money provided by the...

Ideas of fairness influence economic transactions. Men and women may differ systematically in the nature and extent of this influence. We investigate gender differences in the impact of fairness on the outcome of economic transactions. In our “punishment game” subjects may choose to split a...

We report the results of experiments that test for behavioral differences between volunteer subjects recruited in the usual way and pseudo-volunteer subjects in experiments conducted during class time. In a series of dictator games, we find that pseudo-volunteers are more generous on average...