If, as Hume argues, property is a self-referring custom of a group of people, then property rights depend on how that group forms and orders itself. In this article we investigate how people construct a convention for property in an experiment in which groups of self-selected individuals can...

This article uses a laboratory experiment to examine the question of whether justice and fairness are different motivational forces in the dictator game. ‘‘Justice’’ and ‘‘fairness’’ are often used interchangeably because their meanings and usages are so closely linked, despite...

When the value of a product or service is uncertain, outcomes can be inefficient. A market for evaluations can theoretically increase efficiency by voluntarily eliciting an evaluation that would otherwise not be provided. This paper uses a controlled laboratory experiment to test the performance...