This paper provides laboratory evidence on the efficiency-enhancing properties of the Tiebout model as a decentralized system of public goods provision. Tiebout (1956) shows that if a sufficient number of local communities exist to accommodate different types of preferences, individuals sort...

Over the last ten years the literature in experimental economics has seen a growing interest in groups and how they compare to individuals in different settings. This paper contributes to the literature on this topic by investigating the comparison between groups and individuals with respect to...

Previous experimental results (Ballinger et al. (2003) and Carbone and Hey (2004)) have found that many agents fail to correctly take into account the length of the planning horizon also finding some support (See Carbone (2006)) for descriptive models, such as the Rolling Model. This paper...

This paper experimentally studies peer punishment under three alternative technologies. We find that the choice of peer punishment technology has a substantial impact on group performance. First, under a technology where at least two subjects in the group must agree before another group member...

Laws consist of two components: the ‘obligations’ they express and the ‘incentives’ designed to enforce them. In this paper we run a public good experiment to test whether or not obligations have any independent effect on cooperation in social dilemmas. The results show that, for given...

This paper reviews experiments in macroeconomics, pointing out the theoretical justifications, the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. We identify two broad classes of experiments: general equilibrium and partial equilibrium experiments, and emphasize the idea of theory testing that is...

In the insurance literature it is often argued that private markets can provide insurance against ‘risk’ but not against ‘uncertainties’ in the sense of Knight (1921) or Keynes (1921). This claim is at odds with the standard economic model of risk exchange which, in assuming that...

We present an experimental study where we analyze three well-known matching mechanisms. the Boston, the Gale-Shapley, and the Top Trading Cycles mechanisms. in di¤erent informational settings. Our experimental results are consistent with the theory, suggesting that the TTC mechanism outperforms...

We study the process by which subordinated regions of a country can obtain a more favourable political status. In our theoretical model a dominant and a dominated region first interact through a voting process that can lead to different degrees of autonomy. If this process fails then both...

In two studies we examined the willingness to support action to remedy a public problem. In Study 1 people were asked whether they would financially contribute to solution of a public problem. In Study 2, people were asked whether they would sign a petition to support a public action. The aim...