Concern about potential free riding in the provision of public goods has a long history. More recently, experimental economists have turned their attention to the conditions under which free riding would be expected to occur. A model of free riding is provided here which demonstrates that...

Transplants of donated stem cells save the lives of many patients with blood diseases. Donation is somewhat painful, but rarely has lasting adverse effects. Patients can accept transplants only from donors with compatible immune systems. Those lacking a sibling match must seek donations from the...

This paper explored the determinants of survival in a life and death situation created by an external and unpredictable shock. We are interested to see whether pro-social behaviour matters in such extreme situations. We therefore focus on the sinking of the RMS Titanic as a quasi-natural...

The sinking of the Titanic in April 1912 took the lives of 68 percent of the people aboard. Who survived? It was women and children who had a higher probability of being saved, not men. Likewise, people traveling in first class had a better chance of survival than those in second and third...

Redistribution is an inevitable feature of collective pension schemes and economic experiments have revealed that most people have a preference for redistribution that is not merely inspired by self-interest. Interestingly, little is known on how these preferences interact with preferences for...

Intergenerational altruism and contemporaneous cooperation are both important to the provision of long-lived public goods. Equilibrium climate protection may depend more sensitively on either of these considerations, depending on the type of policy rule one examines. This conclusion is based on...

Can social norms affect fundamental patterns of behavior such as income effects? Studies of determinants of giving to charities and other individuals yield a wide range of income-effect estimates. We conduct two experiments to first test whether the effect of income on charitable giving depends...

I study whether saving behavior reveals socially relevant intertemporal preferences. To this end, I decompose the present generation’s preference for the next into its dynastic and cross-dynastic components in a model of saving. If people are concerned about the next generation as such, then...

This study argues that parents have a desire for dividing equally between their children, and that this motive applies to transfers of gifts inter vivos. We suggest that the equal division motive competes with traditional altruism: support to the child or the children with greatest needs. When...

This paper presents evidence from a field experiment, which aims to identify the two sources of worker's pro-social motivation that have been considered in the literature: action-oriented altruism and output-oriented altruism. To this end we employ an experimental design that first measures the...