This paper uses a laboratory experiment to probe the proposition that property emerges anarchically out of social custom. We test the hypothesis that whalers in the 18th and 19th century developed rules of conduct that minimized the sum of the transaction and production costs of capturing their...

This article uses a laboratory experiment to examine the question of whether justice and fairness are different motivational forces in the dictator game. ‘‘Justice’’ and ‘‘fairness’’ are often used interchangeably because their meanings and usages are so closely linked, despite...

The payday loan industry is one of the fastest growing segments of the consumer financial services market in the United States. The purpose of our study is to design an environment similar to the one that payday loan customers face. We then conduct a laboratory experiment to examine what effect,...

This paper uses a laboratory experiment to probe the proposition that property emerges anarchically out of social custom. We test the hypothesis that whalers in the 18th and 19th century developed rules of conduct that minimized the sum of the transaction and production costs of capturing their...