We examine the degree of trust and trustworthiness in an experimental trust game with 662 participants from six different age groups, ranging from 8-year-olds to retired persons. Although both trust and trustworthiness have been identified as fundamental pillars for efficient economic...

We present results from a field experiment testing the gift-exchange hypothesis inside a tree-planting firm paying its workforce incentive contracts. Firm managers told a crew of tree planters they would receive a pay raise for one day as a result of a surplus not attributable to past planting...

This paper discusses voluntary contributions to health education in a shanty town in Peru, using a new experimental setup to identify voluntary contributions to local public goods. The experiment enables individuals to contribute to a health education meeting, which will only continue if the...

In this paper, we apply a multidimensional decomposition of the Gini index to the active and retired populations in France. The multi-decomposition of an inequality measure allows us to put into perspective the role of social spending and taxation in reducing inequalities simultaneously among...

We use experimental data to obtain a detailed description of individuals' pro-sociality. Participants are faced with a large number of decisions involving variations in the tradeoffs between own and others' payoffs, as well as in other potentially important factors like individuals' positions...

The aim of this article is to analyse in depth the interactions of growth and poverty in Syria, which undertook reforms to reduce the government's involvement in the economy. During the 1996–2004 period, growth was pro-poor in ‘weak absolute’ terms but not in either relative or ‘strong...

Despite the increasing awareness concerning the importance of distinguishing chronic and transient poverty for policy making, cross-country comparative studies of poverty dynamics in developing countries are virtually non-existent. The small, though increasing, number of existing studies makes...

How has poverty changed during the 1997-99 period, when the Peruvian economic performance deteriorated seriously under the negative impact of the international financial crisis? The answer to this question has traditionally relied on cross-section comparisons of poverty indicators. In this paper...

I propose a personal reading of some theories of social justice at a moment when the issue of equality or equity appears to be back on the ‘development agenda’. Nowadays the term equity tends to be most often associated with the equality of opportunity principle. After having briefly...

This article studies the formation of preferences regarding redistribution. Its aim is to demonstrate how preferences for redistribution are influenced by individual beliefs on the origins of social inequality and public values. The first section shows, through a microeconomic model, how...