Empirical research suggests that - rather than improving incentives - exerting controlcan reduce workers' performance by eroding motivation. The present paper shows thatintention-based reciprocity can cause such motivational crowding-out if individuals differin their propensity for reciprocity...

Public benefit-cost analysis of market policies often relies on a particular definition of market surplus that adds up consumer and producer surplus and external costs. This paper provides an overview of conceptual strategies to deal with moral considerations and then develops an adjusted market...

When income inequality increases when average income levels increase, rises in average income levels might result in inequality costs. This paper develops marginal social welfare measures that account for the possibility that income inequality changes when average income levels change....

Empirical research suggests that - rather than improving incentives - exerting control can reduce workers' performance by eroding motivation. The present paper shows that intention-based reciprocity can cause such motivational crowding-out if individuals differ in their propensity for...

Economic behavior often takes place in groups of small numbers of peopleinteracting with each other (like work teams, neighborhoods, socialnetworks, etc.). Characteristic of such interaction is the development of(affective) interpersonal relationships, or social ties. According tosociologists,...

The formation of social ties is examined in an experimental study of voluntary public good provision. The experiment consists of three parts. In the first part the value orientation (attitude to a generalized other) ismeasured. In the second part couples play 25 periods of a public good game. In...

We study the effects of competition in a context in which people's actions can not be contractually fixed. We find that in such an environment the very presence of competition does neither increase efficiency nor does it yield any payoff gains for the short side of the market. We also find that...

We experimentally study the relationship between other-regarding preferences, group identity and political participation. In doing so, we propose a novel group identity induction procedure that succeeds in creating environments where in-group bias is either high or low. At the individual level,...

We experimentally study the relationship between other-regarding preferences, group identity and political participation. In doing so, we propose a novel group identity induction procedure that succeeds in creating environments where in-group bias is either high or low. At the individual level,...

Growth empirics with institutional measures is performed for 25 transition countries overthe period 1990-95. Estimation results suggest that (particularly state) institutions aresignificant for growth and, especially, foreign direct investment (FDI), the latter in turnbeing important for the...