Empirical studies of tropical forest hunting have shown the existence of marked spatialgradients of hunting effort, game harvest, and animal abundance, as hunters mostlyhunt near villages, roads, and rivers. The mechanisms underlying these patterns have,however, hitherto been poorly known. This...

A farm-level and village level models are discussed and tested empirically using spatial data, for exploring the cross-effects between population density and land inequality in the "tragedy of the commons". Malthus himself argued that "An unfavourable distribution of produce, by prematurely...

Data from three bargaining games-the Dictator Game, the Ultimatum Game, and the Third-Party Punishment Game-played in 15 societies are presented. The societies range from USundergraduates to Amazonian, Arctic, and African hunter-gatherers. Behaviour within the games varies markedly across...

We use an experimental field approach to understand better the pro-social preferences andbehavior of both individuals involved in the provision of social services (public servants) and the behavior of those potential beneficiaries, the poor. We conducted field experiments using the Dictator,...

Behavior in the local commons is usually embedded in a context of regulations and social norms that the group of users face. Such norms and rules affect how individuals value material and non-material incentives and therefore determine their decision to cooperate or over extract the resources...

The dilemma of collective action around water use and management involves solving both the problems of provision and appropriation. Cooperation in the provision can be affected by the rival nature of the appropriation and the asymmetries in the access. We report two field experiments conducted...

Any system of transfer payments must be administered by officials with some degree of discretionary power over the manner in which funds are allocated. Attitudes of such officials regarding the worthiness of various recipients therefore have implications for resource allocation. Using a sample...

The afro-descendent people of the Sanquianga region in the Colombian Pacific Coast live under particularly extreme poverty conditions. Although highly integrated to markets through very frequent interactions, their access to basic social services and stable income generating activities are...

We model the dynamic effects of external enforcement on the exploitation of a common pool resource. Fitting our model to the results of experimental data we find that institutions influence social preferences. We solve two puzzles in the data: the increase and later erosion of cooperation when...

La internalización de las externalidades de grupo derivadas del dilema entre el interés individual y el interés social requieren el diseño de instituciones a través del mercado, el estado o de formas auto-gobernadas que generen en los agentes un cambio en los incentivos pecuniarios o no...