We investigate the norm of just deserts and its effect on honesty. Just deserts is an essential norm in a market society, and honesty is an important factor in economic and social exchange. In particular, we analyze what happens when the social distributive rules betray the reasonable...

According to the Terror Management Theory, the fear of death may induce anxiety and threaten individual self-esteem. To remove this fear, individuals need to obtain and sustain self-esteem, for example by competing in rank order tournaments, or by focusing on status seeking. Within an...

We investigate the optimal R&D portfolio of a single-product monopolist investing in cost-reducing activities accompanied by efforts improving the quality of its product. There emerges that the firm’s relative incentives along the two directions are conditional upon market affluency, measured...

We conduct an artefactual field experiment to study whether the individual preferences and propensity to cooperate of temporary workers differ from permanent contract workers. We find that temporary and permanent contract workers have different other-regarding preferences, but display similar...

This paper investigates the determinants of reciprocity towards the experimenters in the lab under a flat-wage scheme. We find that personality attributes – such as agreeableness – help predict the behaviour of the subjects. We additionally propose and assess a general measure of reciprocity.

The thought of one’s own death induces anxiety and threatens self-esteem. According to Terror Management Theory, to reduce this existential threat individuals typically embrace their cultural worldview, and seek for an increase in self-esteem and status by improving their productivity. Within...