We study the stability of voluntary cooperation in response to varying rates at which a group grows. Using a laboratory public-good game with voluntary contributions and economies of scale, we construct a situation in which expanding a group’s size yields potential efficiency gains, but only...

We examine whether the ‘Level-k’ model of strategic behavior generates reliable cross-game predictions within an individual. We find no correlation in subjects’ estimated levels of reasoning across two families of games. Furthermore, estimating a higher level for Ann than Bob in one family...

In the basic model of international environmental agreements (IEAs) (Barrett 1994, Rubio and Ulph 2006) extended by international trade, self-enforcing - or stable - IEAs may comprise up to 60% of all countries (Eichner and Pethig 2013). But these IEAs reduce total emissions only slightly...

We examine behavioral gender differences and gender pairing effects in a laboratory experiment with face-to-face alternating-offers wage bargaining. Our results suggest that male players are able to obtain better bargaining outcomes than female players. Male employees get higher wages than...

Unilateral carbon policies are inefficient due to the fact that they generally involve emission reductions in countries with high marginal abatement costs and because they are subject to carbon leakage. In this paper, we ask whether the use of carbon tariffs—tariffs on the carbon embodied in...

A controversy has been simmering in law for at least 30 years about whether pro bono work should be mandatory for lawyers, who now donate 1-3% of their time to the poor. This has centered on the unmet legal needs of the poor, the duty of lawyers, and the contrast with US doctors, who are...

For sufficiently low abatement costs many countries might undertake significant emission reductions even without any international agreement on emission reductions. We consider a situation where a coalition of countries does not cooperate on emission reductions but cooperates on the development...

This paper explores the sale of an object to an ambiguity averse buyer. We show that the seller can increase his profit by using an ambiguous mechanism. That is, the seller can benefit from hiding certain features of the mechanism that he has committed to from the agent. We then characterize the...

We investigate the link between leadership, beliefs and pro-social behavior. This link is interesting because field evidence suggests that people’s behavior in domains like charitable giving, tax evasion, corporate culture and corruption is influenced by leaders (CEOs, politicians) and beliefs...

The dynamics of behavior observed in standard public-good experiments can be explained by imperfect conditional cooperation combined with social learning (Fischbacher and Gächter, 2010). But it is unclear what determines first-round contributions. We argue that first-round contributions depend...