We develop a model that relates self-control and conflict identification to cooperation patterns in social dilemmas. As predicted, we find in a laboratory public goods experiment a robust association between stronger self-control and higher levels of cooperation. This means that there is...

Recent research has shown that women shy away from competition more often than men. We evaluate experimentally three alternative policy interventions to promote women in competitions: Quotas, Preferential Treatment, and Repetition of the Competition unless a critical number of female winners is...

This paper experimentally investigates the role of beliefs, trust, and risk in shaping cooperative behavior. By applying incentivized elicitation methods to measure these concepts, we find that beliefs about others’ behavior and trust are positively associated with cooperation in a public...

Much evidence suggests that between-country social comparisons have become more important over time due to globalization. This paper analyzes optimal income taxation in a multi-country economy, where consumers derive utility from their relative consumption compared with both other domestic...

Credence goods markets are characterized by asymmetric information between sellers and consumers that may give rise to inefficiencies, such as under- and overtreatment or market break-down. We study in a large experiment with 936 participants the determinants for efficiency in credence goods...

We examine the influence of guilt and trust on the performance of credence goods markets. An expert can make a promise to a consumer first, whereupon the consumer can express her trust by paying an interaction price before the expert's provision and charging decisions. We argue that the expert's...

I show that a simple formal model of reciprocal altruism is able to predict human behavior in contracting situations, puzzling when considered within selfishness assumption. For instance, motivation and performance crowding-out are explained by a signaling mechanism in which provision of an...

Since the analysis of a self-enforcing agreement by Barrett (1994) it has been clear that the ratio between the slopes of the marginal cost and marginal benefit functions is conclusive for stability of self-enforcing agreements. For example Finus and Rundshagen (1998) stated: 'it turns out that...

A growing literature in economics examines the development of preferences among children and adolescents. We combine a repeated dictator game with treatments that either provides participants with information about the average behavior of others or not. In a sample of 384 children aged 5-17, we...