mode of production exist that is based on the contributions of many software programmerswithout providing any direct monetary incentives for them? And how can these programmerscoordinate their actions without relying on either the guidance of the price mechanism or thedirection through a...

A simple two-person distribution game similar to the ultimatumgame is introduced. However, unlike the standard ultimatumgame, responders can determine the payoff for the proposerin case of rejection. Therefore, they can express their concerns inmonetary quantities. The experimental data are...

We set up a two-stage game with sequential moves by one altruistic agent andn selfish agents. The rotten kid theorem states that the altruist can only reach her firstbest when the selfish agents move before the altruist. The Samaritan’s dilemma, on theother hand, states that the altruist can...

A common feature of the literature on the evolution of preferencesis that evolution favors nonmaterialistic preferences only if preferencetypes are observable at least to some degree. We argue that this resultis due to the assumption that in each state of the evolutionary dynam-ics some Bayesian...

We augment a standard dictator game to investigate how preferences for an environmental project relate to willingness to limit others’ choices. We explore this issue by distinguishing three student groups: economists, environmental economists, and environmental social scientists. We find that...

The evidence strongly suggests a robust negative relationship between income and fertility, anda positive relationship between income and longevity. This is puzzling for standard dynamicmodels. For instance, altruistic models that use the most standard preferences in macro-timeseparable CRRA...

Recent research has led to the empirical regularity that rm growth rate distributionsare heavy tailed. This nding implies that a few rms experience spectaculargrowth rates and decline, but that most rms have marginal growth rates. The literatureon high growth rms shows that high growth rms are...

The predominant part of the literature states that women are more likely to donate tocharitable causes but men are more generous in terms of the amount given. The last resultgenerally derives from the focus on mean amount given...

What differentiates American capitalism from all other forms of industrial capitalism is a historical focus on both the creation of wealth (entrepreneurship) and the reconstitution of wealth (philanthropy). Philanthropy has been part of the implicit American social contract that continuously...

I conduct an experiment to assess whether majority voting on a nonbindingsharing norm affects subsequent behavior in a dictator game. Ina baseline treatment, subjects play a one shot dictator game. In a votingtreatment, subjects are first placed behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ and vote onthe...