In contrast to the simplifying assumption of selfishness, social incentives have been shown to play a role in economic interactions. Before incorporating social incentives into models and policies, however, one needs to know their efficiency relative to standard pay-for-performance incentives....

We compare behavior in modified dictator games with and without role uncertainty. Subjects choose between a selfish action, a costly surplus creating action (altruistic behavior) and a costly surplus destroying action (spiteful behavior). While costly surplus creating actions are most frequent...

We study optimal contracts in a simple model where employees are averse to inequity as modelled by Fehr and Schmidt (1999). A selfish employer can profitably exploit envy or guilt by offering contracts which create inequity off-equilibrium, i.e., when employees do not meet his demands. Such...

We compare the determinants of individual giving between two countries, Spain and the US, which differ in their redistribution policies and their beliefs over the causes of poverty. By varying the information about the determinants of income, we find that, although overall giving is similar in...

We report experimental results on a series of ten one-shot two-person 3x3 normal form games with unique equilibrium in pure strategies played by non-economists. In contrast to previous experiments in which game theory predictions fail dramatically, a majority of actions taken coincided with the...

We study how gender differences in performance under competition are affected by the provision of information regarding rivals gender and/or differences in relative ability. In a laboratory experiment, we use two tasks that differ regarding perceptions about which gender outperforms the other....

This paper uses subjects self-reported justifications to explain discrepancies between observed heterogeneous behavior and the unique equilibrium prediction in a one-shot travelers dilemma experiment (TD). Principal components (PC) analysis suggests that iterative reasoning, aspiration levels,...

We use subjects actions in modified dictator games to perform a within-subject classification of individuals into four different types of interdependent preferences: Selfish, Social Welfare maximizers, Inequity Averse and Competitive. We elicit beliefs about other subjects actions in the same...

Affirmative-action policies bias tournament rules in order to provide equal opportunities to a group of competitors who have a disadvantage they cannot be held responsible for. Critics argue that they distort incentives, resulting in lower individual performance, and that the selected pool of...