In financial markets, professional traders leverage their trades because it allows to trade larger positions with less margin. Violating margin requirements, however, triggers a margin call and open positions are automatically covered until requirements are met again. What impact does margin...

Previous research indicates that risky and uncertain marginal returns from the public good significantly lower contributions. This paper presents experimental results illustrating that the effects of risk and uncertainty depend on the employed parameterization. Specifically, if the value of the...

This article examines the nature of human behavior in a nested social dilemma referred to as the Spillover Game. Players are divided into two groups with positive production interdependencies. Based on theoretically derived opportunistic, local, and global optima, our experimental results...

One-way communication has been found to substantially increase contributions in linear voluntary contribution mechanisms. We confirm the robustness of this result in the presence of income heterogeneity. -- Public goods experiment ; Cheap talk ; Heterogeneous endowments

In this paper, we study a voluntary contribution mechanism with one-way communication. The relevance of one person's words is assessed by assigning exogenously the role of the "communicator" to one group member. Contrary to the view that the mutual exchange of promises is necessary for the...

Abundant evidence suggests that high levels of contributions to public goods can be sustained through self-governed monitoring and sanctions. This experimental study investigates the effectiveness of decentralized sanctioning institutions where punishment opportunities are restricted to agents...

The provision of public goods regularly embodies interrelated spheres of influence on multiple scales. This article examines the nature of human behavior in a multilevel social dilemma game with positive provision externalities to local and global scales. We report experimental results showing...

We experimentally test the social motives behind individual participation in intergroup conflict by manipulating the framing and symmetry of conflict. We find that behavior in conflict depends on whether one is harmed by actions perpetrated by the out-group, but not on one’s own influence on...

We investigate experimentally the underlying motivations and individual differences with regard to the participation in between-group conflict in nested social dilemmas. In our nested social dilemmas, the collective is divided into two groups, and individuals allocate tokens between a private, a...

Viewing individual contributions as investments in emission reduction we rely on the familiar linear public goods-game to set global reduction targets which, if missed, imply that all payoffs are destroyed with a certain probability. Regulation by milestones does not only impose a final...