Contests are meant to attract the best performers and incentivize high effort, however, they may also attract cheaters who try to win via illicit means which crowds out the best performers. We use a laboratory experiment to explore the role of self-selection in contests with a possibility of...

Using an experimental approach, this paper examines how scarcity of natural resources affects people's readiness to cooperate and to engage in antisocial behaviour. The experiments were carried out with pastoralists from southern Namibia whose livelihoods are highly dependent on grazing...

We show in a public goods experiment on three continents that conditional cooperation is a universal behavioral regularity. Yet, the number of conditional cooperators and the extent of conditional cooperation are much higher in the U.S.A. than anywhere else. -- conditional cooperation ; public...

We study the effects of leadership in the provision of public goods by examining (i) the relative importance of reward and punishment as leadership devices, (ii) whether endogenous leadership is more efficient than exogenously enforced leadership, and (iii) whether leaders contributing last,...

We use a limited information environment to mimic the state of confusion in an experimental, repeated public goods game. The results show that reinforcement learning leads to dynamics similar to those observed in standard public goods games. However, closer inspection shows that individual decay...

Many policies addressing global climate change revolve around the implementation of mitigation and adaptation strategies. We experimentally examine subjects? choices in a climate change game where subjects are put into groups where they face a potential damage and have the choice to invest...

The provision of public goods often benefits a larger group than those who actively provide the public good. In an experimental setting, this paper addresses institutional arrangements between subjects who can provide a public good (insiders) and subjects who benefit from the public good but...

We examine behavior in one-shot appropriation games with deterministic and probabilistic degradation externalities, where the marginal net benefit from appropriation is endogenous, dependent on individuals' expectations of group appropriation. The experimental design involves a menu of games...

We present experimental evidence for decision settings where public good providers compete for endogenous donations offered by outside donors. Donors receive benefits from public good provision but cannot provide the good themselves. The performance of three competition mechanisms is examined in...

Understanding the roots of human cooperation among strangers is of great importance for solving pressing social dilemmas and maintening public goods in human societies. We study the development of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine...