We study the stability of voluntary cooperation in response to varying rates at which a group grows. Using a laboratory public-good game with voluntary contributions and economies of scale, we construct a situation in which expanding a group's size yields potential efficiency gains, but only if...

We investigate whether there is a link between conditional cooperation and betrayal aversion. We use a public goods game to classify subjects by type of contribution preference and by belief about the contributions of others; and we measure betrayal aversion for different categories of subject....

We provide a test of the role of social preferences and beliefs in voluntary cooperation and its decline. We elicit individuals' cooperation preferences in one experiment and use them - as well as subjects' elicited beliefs - to explain contributions to a public good played repeatedly. We find...

Global warming is an example of a global tragedy of the commons. The atmosphere is a global common property resource. The global nature of this resource makes global warming a particularly difficult problem to solve. The reason for this is that there is no world government that can introduce and...

We study how punishment influences conditional cooperation. We ask two questions: 1) how does conditional cooperation change if a subject can be punished and 2) how does conditional cooperation change if a subject has the power to punish others. In particular, we disentangle the decision to be a...

Global warming is an example of a global tragedy of the commons. The atmosphere is a global common property resource. The global nature of this resource makes global warming a particularly difficult problem to solve. The reason for this is that there is no world government that can introduce and...