Time-consuming and costly religious rituals pose a puzzle for economists committed to rational choice theories of human behavior. We propose that religious rituals promote in-group trust and cooperation that help to overcome collective-action problems. We test this hypothesis on communal...

The in-group-out-group bias is among the most well documented and widely observed phenomenon in the social sciences. Despite its role in hiring decisions and job discrimination, negotiations, and conflict and competition between groups, economists have heretofore ignored the in- group-out-group...

This paper investigates whether expectations of trustworthiness and resulting acts of trust accord with an objective model of trustworthiness or are biased. Combining experimental and survey data, I find that Ghanaian workers appropriately take account of the religiousness of trustees, but...

Suppose an altruistic person, A, is willing to transfer resources to a second person, B, if B comes upon hard times. If B anticipates that A will act in this manner, B will save too little from both agents' point of view. This is the Samaritan's dilemma. The logic of the dilemma has been...

This paper models aid agencies as financial intermediaries that do not make a financial return to depositors, since the depositors' concern is to transfer resources to investor-beneficiaries. This leads to a significant problem of verification of the agencies' activities. One solution to this...