Using village data from Tanzania, we test whether gifts and loans between households are voluntary while correcting for mis-reporting by the giving and receiving households.  Two maintained assumptions underlie our analysis: answers to a question on who people would turn to for help are good...

Interconnections among financial institutions create potential channels for contagion and amplification of shocks to the financial system.  We propose precise definitions of these concepts and analyze their magnitude.  Contagion occurs when a shock to the assets of a single firm causes other...

The literature has shown that network architecture depends crucially on whether links are formed unilaterally or bilaterally, that is, on whether the consent of both nodes is required for a link to be formed.  We propose a test of whether network data is best seen as an actual link or...

Data from three bargaining games - the Dictator Game, the Ultimatum Game, and the Third-Party Punishment Game - played in 15 societies are presented.  The societies range from US undergraduates to Amazonian, Arctic, and African hunter-gatherers.  Behaviour within the games varies markedly...

This study analyses behaviour of women community based organisations in two districts in Nepal in reducing prevalence of child malnutrition in member households. Our survey focused on three sets of women organisations: those that receive intensive external support are compared with those that...

Working with a sample of individuals from 43 countries, including some of the most and least corrupt in the world, we run an experiment in which: `private citizens` have to decide whether and how much to offer `public servants` in exchange for corrupt services; `public servants` have to decide...

Using a simple one-shot bribery game, we find evidence of a negative externality effect and a framing effect.  When the losses suffered by third parties due to a bribe being offered and accepted are high and the game is presented as a petty corruption scenario instead of in abstract terms...

A corrupt transaction is often the result of bargaining between the parties involved.  This paper models bribery as a double auction where a private citizen and a public official strategically interact as the potential buyer and the potential seller of a corrupt service.  Individuals differ in...

Monitoring corruption typically relies on top-down interventions aimed at increasing the probability of external controls and the severity of punishment.  An alternative approach to fighting corruption is to induce bottom-up pressure for reform.  Recent studies have shown that both top-down...

Why do some people choose corruption over honesty and others not?  Do the social norms and values prevailing in the societies in which they grew up affect their decisions?  In 2005, we conducted a bribery experiment and found that, among undergraduates, we could predict who would act corruptly...