We conduct a field experiment with low-income subjects in Dallas, Texas. We examine voluntary, informal risk sharing using a visual representation of the solidarity game developed for low-literacy populations. We find substantially more ‘fixed gift to loser' behavior and less ‘egotistical'...

Our research investigates whether social preferences are stable across contexts in the field. We build a unique data set by recruiting participants from a low-income urban neighborhood to participate in a series of laboratory experiments. Their decisions are used to demonstrate the stability of...

Previous research demonstrates that individuals vary in their social preferences. Less well-understood is how group composition affects the behavior of different social preference types. Does one bad apple really spoil the bunch? This paper exogenously identifies experimental participants’...

This paper contributes to the corruption literature by implementing bribery in the laboratory as a dynamic three person sequential game with a focus on social inefficiency and citizen response. In contrast to the design of Abbink (2002) and Cameron et al (2006), our design holds bribe-bargaining...

One commonly-used strategy in charitable fundraising is sharing names and contact information of donors between organizations, even those whose missions are unrelated. The efficacy of this practice hinges on the existence of “giving types,” that is, a positive correlation at the individual...

We conduct experiments to test the collective action dilemmas associated with defensive and proactive counterterror strategies. Defensive policies are associated with creating public ‘bads’ (e.g., a commons) whereas proactive policies are akin to the voluntary provision of public goods. When...