People have been shown to engage in favor-trading when it is efficiency-enhancing to do so. Will they also trade favors when it reduces efficiency, as in a series of wasteful public projects that each benefits an individual? We introduce the “Stakeholder Public Bad” game to study this...

This paper addresses the complex and overlooked relationship between the receipt of workers’ remittances and institutional quality in the recipient country. Using a simple model, we show how an increase in remittance inflows can lead to deterioration of institutional quality –...

Remittance inflows have increased considerably in recent years and are large relative to the size of many recipient economies. The theoretical and empirical effects of remittance inflows on output growth volatility are, however, ambiguous. On the one hand, remittances have been a remarkably...

Recent experimental evidence suggests that some people dislike telling lies, and tell the truth even at a cost. We use experiments as well to study the socio-demographic covariates of such lie aversion, and find gender and religiosity to be without predictive value. However, subjects’ major is...

We show that a combination of temporariness and spending pressure is intrinsic to the aid relationship. In our analysis, recipients rationally discount the pronouncements of donors about the duration of their commitments because in equilibrium they know that some donors will honor those...

This paper tests the external validity of a simple Dictator Game as a laboratory analogue for a naturally occurring policy-relevant decision-making context. In Uganda, where teacher absenteeism is a problem, primary school teachers’ allocations to parents in a Dictator Game are positively but...

Using a South African data set, the paper poses six questions about the determinants of subjective well-being. Much of the paper is concerned with the role of relative concepts. We find that comparator income - measured as average income of others in the local residential cluster - enters the...

Prior studies have shown that selfish behavior is reduced when co–players have the opportunity to approve/disapprove a player’s choice, even if that has no consequences on the player’s material payoff. Using a prisoner’s dilemma, we experimentally study the causes of this phenomenon,...

The literature on social norms stresses that compliance with norms is approved while deviance is disapproved. Based on this, we explore the content of social norms using experimental data from five dictator games with a feedback stage. Our data suggests that subjects either care about a...

In games with multiple equilibria, the fairest equilibrium –in case one exists- may be the obvious solution for some players but not for others, and players can be aware of this heterogeneity. This paper theoretically explores how coordination could be achieved in this case. The model is...