We examine why heterogenous communities may fail to provide public goods. Current work characterizes sanctioning free-riders as an under-supplied public good. We argue that often free-riders can be punished by the coordinated action of a group. This punishment can be profitable, and need not be...

Field studies of conflict report cycles of mutual revenge between groups, often linked to perceptions of intergroup injustice. We test the hypothesis that people are predisposed to reciprocate against groups. In a computerized laboratory experiment, subjects who were harmed by a partner’s...

In public goods environments, the threat to punish non-contributors may increase contributions. However, this threat may make players' contributions less informative about their true social preferences. This lack of information may lead to lower contributions after the threat disappears, as we...

We report an experiment on the Probabilistic Serial (PS) mechanism for allocating indivisible goods. The PS mechanism, a recently discovered alternative to the widely used Random Serial Dictatorship mechanism, has attractive fairness and efficiency properties if people report their preferences...

We report an experiment on the Probabilistic Serial (PS) mechanism for allocating indivisible goods. The PS mechanism, a recently discovered alternative to the widely used Random Serial Dictatorship mechanism, has attractive fairness and efficiency properties if people report their preferences...

Previous theories of globalization have examined factor mobility’s effect on the political conflict between social classes. But factor mobility also increases competition between state rulers in providing services for citizens. I ask how this interstate competition affects the process of...

Why did representative politicians introduce direct democratic reforms, thus binding their own hands? This paper presents a formal model in which (1) voters are uncertain about their representative’s preferences; (2) direct and representative elections are substitute methods for voters to...

In the tight budgetary conditions following the 2008 financial crisis, governments have proposed saving money by reforming public services. This paper argues that tight budget constraints make reform harder by introducing an information problem. Governments are uncertain about bureaucratic...

We examine discrimination against outgroups in the context of the December 2008 riots in Greece after the killing of a 15-year-old student by a special police agent. We examine students’ allocations between themselves and others, including police, in modified Dictator games, allowing us to...