Data from a recent ?eld experiment suggests that differences in participation rates are responsible for much of the variations in revenues across formats in charity auctions. We provide a theoretical framework for the analysis of this, and other related, results. The model illustrates the limits...

Auctions are a popular way to raise money for charities, but relatively little is known, either theoretically or empirically, about the properties of charity auctions. The small theoretical literature suggests that the all-pay auction should garner more money than winner-pay auctions. We conduct...

We conduct a vignette study of the propensity to commit the sunk cost fallacy with 106 undergradu-ates. Our contribution is to examine the socio-demographic determinants of "sunk cost sensitivity." The likelihood of commitment is found to be positively correlated with some ethnicities,...

Many experiments have demonstrated the power of norm enforcement-peer monitoring and punishment-to maintain, or even increase, contributions in social dilemma settings, but little is known about the underlying norms that monitors use to make punishment decisions. Using a large sample of...

Aspiration-based evolutionary dynamics have recently been used to model the evolution of fair play in the ultimatum game showing that incredible threats to reject low offers persist in equilibrium. We focus on two extensions of this analysis: we experimentally test whether assumptions about...

In many environments, tournaments can elicit more effort from workers, except perhaps when workers can sabotage each other. Because it is hard to separate effort, ability and output in many real workplace settings, the empirical evidence on the incentive effect of tournaments is thin. There is...

The enforcement of social norms often requires that unaffected third parties sanction offenders. Given the renewed interest of economists in norms, the literature on third party punishment is surprisingly thin, however. In this paper, we report on the results of an experiment designed to...

We define social reciprocity as the act of demonstrating one's disapproval, at some personal cost, for the violation of widely-held norms (e.g., don't free ride). Social reciprocity differs from standard notions of reciprocity because social reciprocators intervene whenever a norm is violated...

This paper explores a possible connection between two behavioral anomalies in economics, the observed responsiveness of individual decision-makers to sunk costs, and the apparent failure of backward induction to predict outcomes in experimental bargaining games. In particular, we show that under...

This paper examines the extent to which public health insurance crowds out purchases of private insurance. Specifically, the effect of Medicaid's medically needy program on the probability that an individual will buy private insurance is investigated. Evidence presented here suggests that the...