There is ample evidence for a "democracy premium". Laws that have been implemented via election lead to a more cooperative behavior compared to a top-down approach. This has been observed using field data and laboratory experiments. We present evidence from Chinese students and workers who...

This paper investigates the role of guilt aversion for corruption in public administration. Corruption is modeled as the outcome of a game played between a bureaucrat, a lobby, and the public. There is a moral cost of corruption for the bureaucrat, who is averse to letting the public down. We...

This paper studies how income tax rates are determined and how they are related to government corruption in the form of fund capture. A model is presented where rich voters can block redistribution by buying the votes of some poor voters. In equilibrium there is only limited redistribution and...

Mutual aid among villagers in developing countries is often the only means of insuring against economic shocks. We use "lab-in-the-field experiments" in Cambodian villages to study social cohesion in established and newly resettled communities. Both communities are part of a land distribution...

We examine the effectiveness of three democratically chosen rules that alleviate the coordination and cooperation problems inherent in collectively managed common-pool resources. In particular we investigate how rule effectiveness and rule compliance depends on the prevailing local norms and...

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...