Governments often provide their citizens with goods and services that are also supplied in markets: education, housing, nutritional assistance, etc. We analyze the political economy of the public provision of private goods when individuals care about their social image. We show that image...

Cities increasingly address climate change, e.g. by pledging city-level emission reduction targets. This is puzzling for the provision of a global public good: what are city governments' reasons for doing so, and do pledges actually translate into emission reductions? Empirical studies have...

This paper experimentally studies two simple interventions aimed at increasing public goods provision in settings in which accurate feedback about contributions is not available. The first intervention aims to exploit lying aversion by requiring subjects to send a non-verifiable ex post...

We experimentally analyze leading by example in a public goods game with two permanent and two temporary group members. Our results show that leadership when permanent and temporary members interact leads to lower contributions than interaction without leadership.

Evidence from studies in international relations, the politics of reform, collective action and price competition suggests that economic agents in social dilemma situations cooperate more to avoid losses than in the pursuit of gains. To test whether the prospect of losses can induce cooperation,...