A group of heterogenous agents may form partnerships in pairs. All single agents as well as all partnerships generate values. If two agents choose to cooperate, they need to specify how to split their joint value among one another. In equilibrium, which may or may not exist, no agents have...

We study the capacity of business associations|private, formal, noncommercial organizations designed to promote the common business interests of their members|to support contract enforcement and collective action. Inspired by recent empirical literature, our theoretical framework connects the...

Collective-choice rules aggregate individual choices into a group choice. This study addresses the role of collective-choice rules in a social dilemma situation in which group members can repeatedly choose a combination of institutions to achieve self-governance. Specifically, we investigate...

We show that an environmental regulation such as a tax on pollution can act as a collusive device and induce stable cartelization in an oligopolistic polluting industry. We consider a dynamic game where pollution is allowed to accumulate into a stock over time and a cartel that includes all the...

This paper presents the results of a threshold public goods game experiment with heterogeneous players. The experiment is designed in close collaboration with the Dutch association of agri-environmental farmer collectives. Subjects are recruited at a university (“the lab”) and a farm...

Environmentalists often urge their home countries to take a leading role in reducing global environmental problems like climate change. A pertinent question is: will examples set by leading nations influence others to follow suit, and if so, do the costs of leading matter? For instance, will...