Public good contribution in experiments may at least partially be driven by the social demand to contribute that is implicit in them. We consider a questionnaire measure and build a behavioural measure of sensitivity to social pressure based on paired dictator and money burning games; we find...

We study antisocial preferences in simple money-burning tasks. A decision maker can choose whether or not to reduce another person's payoff at an own cost. We vary across tasks the initial endowment of the decider and the victim. We find that most conventional expectations are refuted: Subjects...

We investigate the consequences of a pure income effect on the altruistic behavior of donors. Inequity aversion theories predict either no effect or a decrease in giving, whereas warm-glow theory predicts an increase in giving with an increase in the common income of donor and receiver....

Social information 'nudges' concerning how others perform typically boost individual performances in experiments with one group reference point. However, in many natural settings, sometimes due to policy, there are several such group reference points. We address the complications that such...

We analyze lottery-choice data in a way that separately estimates the effects of risk aversion and complexity aversion, and allows both both of these to vary between individuals, and also to change with experience. The data is from an experiment in which 80 subjects engage in a sequence of 54...

Are prices or quantities the best regulatory instrument to align private actions with public interests in the presence of externalities? We add another dimension to this ongoing debate by experimentally analyzing the interaction between instrument choice and intrinsic motivation of regulated...

We devise a new experimental game by nesting a voluntary contributions mechanism in a broader spectrum of incentive schemes. With it, we study tensions between egalitarianism, equity concerns, self-interest, and the need for incentives. In a 2x2 design, subjects either vote on or exogenously...

Teams often suffer from a free rider problem with respect to individual contributions. That putting teams into competition with each other can mitigate this problem is an important recent insight. However, we know little about how inequality in endowment between teams might influence this...

At least since Adam Smith, economists have recognized the beneficial effects of competition in markets. The possible positive influence of competition between teams on the free rider problem within teams is a more recent discovery. It is important because the free rider problem exists to some...