We study experimentally how taxpayers choose between two tax regimes to fund a public good. The first-best tax regime imposes a general, distortion-free income tax. However, this tax cannot be enforced. The second-best alternative supplements the income tax by a specific commodity tax. This tax...

Viewing individual contributions as investments in emission reduction we rely on the familiar linear public goods-game to set global reduction targets which, if missed, imply that all payoffs are destroyed with a certain probability. Regulation by milestones does not only impose a final...

We study conditional cooperation based on a sequential two-person linear public good game in which a trusting first contributor can be exploited by a second contributor. After playing this game the first contributor is allowed to punish the second contributor. The consequences of sanctioning...

The provision of public goods regularly embodies interrelated spheres of influence on multiple scales. This article examines the nature of human behavior in a multilevel social dilemma game with positive provision externalities to local and global scales. We report experimental results showing...

Similar to Levati and Neugebauer (2001), a clock is used by which participants can vary their individual contributions for voluntarily providing a public good. As time goes by, participants either in(de)crease their contribution gradually or keep it constant. Groups of two poorly and two richly...

Extensive research on human cooperation in social dilemmas has shown that individuals condition their behaviour upon the behaviour of others. However, few attempts have been made to disentangle the motivations backing conditional cooperation. We try to assess the relative importance of three...

Participants in a public goods experiment receive private or common signals regarding the so-called "point of no return", meaning that if the group's total contribution falls below this point, all payoffs are reduced. An individual faces the usual conflict between private and collective...

This article examines the nature of human behavior in a nested social dilemma referred to as the Spillover Game. Players are divided into two groups with positive production interdependencies. Based on theoretically derived opportunistic, local, and global optima, our experimental results...

Extensive research on human cooperation in social dilemmas has shown that individuals condition their behaviour upon the behaviour of others. However, few attempts have been made to disentangle the motivations backing conditional cooperation. We try to assess the relative importance of three...

Participants in a public goods experiment receive private or common signals regarding the so-called point of no return, meaning that if the group's total contribution falls below this point, all payoffs are reduced. An individual faces the usual conflict between private and collective interests...