Do groups and individuals behave differently in dictator games with varying deservingness of the recipient? Does the involvement in group-decision making affect the decisions of group members in subsequent individual decisions? We address these questions using a controlled dictator-game...

Understanding the roots of human cooperation among strangers is of great importance for solving pressing social dilemmas and maintening public goods in human societies. We study the development of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine...

In cases of conflict of interest, people can lie directly about payoff relevant private information, or they can evade the truth without lying directly. We analyse this situation theoretically and test the key predictions in an experimental sender-receiver setting. We find senders prefer to...

Price surges often generate social disapproval and requests for regulation and price controls, but these interventions may cause inefficiencies and shortages. To study how individuals perceive and reason about sudden price increases for different products under different policy regimes, we...

Voters often express support for a candidate whose policy platforms differ from their ideal policy preferences. We argue that under these circumstance acts of expressing support can causally change voters’ policy preferences. We conceptualize our arguments in a theoretical model of policy...

We study the development of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine pre-registered hypotheses about which of three fundamental pillars of human cooperation – direct and indirect reciprocity, and third-party punishment – emerges earliest...

Under weak contract enforcement the trading parties' trust, defined as their belief in other's trustworthiness, appears important for realizing gains from trade. In contrast, under strong contract enforcement beliefs about other's trustworthiness appear less important, suggesting that trust and...

The evidence shows source-dependent entitlement to income sources and individuals are reluctant to part with income they feel more entitled to, e.g., earned labor income. Taxpayers may also be more reluctant to part with tax payments (evade more) from income sources they feel more entitled to- a...

Do people anticipate the conditions that enable them to manipulate their beliefs when confronted with unpleasant information? We investigate whether individuals seek out the "cognitive flexibility" needed to distort beliefs in self-serving ways, or instead attempt to constrain it, committing to...

Evidence from hypothetical scenarios strongly suggests the existence of a sunk cost bias, the tendency to ‘throw good money after bad money.’ However, the few studies using incentives are inconclusive. In addition, evidence on potential psychological channels underlying such a bias is...