This article examines the nature of human behavior in a nested socialdilemma referred to as the Spillover Game. Players are divided into twogroups with positive production interdependencies. Based on theoreticallyderived opportunistic, local, and global optima, our experimental...

When a deficit occurs in the funding of collective goods, it is usually covered by raising theamount of taxes or by rationing the supply of the goods. This article compares the efficiencyof these institutions. We report the results of a 2x2 experiment based on a game in the firststage of which...

We report the results of an experimental study that compares voting mechanismsin the provision of public goods. Subjects can freely decide how much they want tocontribute. Whether the public good is finally provided is decided by a referendumunder full information about all contributions. If...

In this paper we investigate the effects of local interaction in a CPR-like environment.We employ a local interaction model where subjects are allocated alonga circle and only interact with their most direct neighbors. In traditional socialdilemma experiments, the return of one’s actions is...

This paper studies the effect of introducing costly partner selection for the voluntarycontribution to a public good. Subjects participate in six sequences offive rounds of a two-person public good game in partner design. At the end ofeach sequence, subjects can select a new partner out of six...

We consider a society composed of two regions. Each of them pro-vides a public good whose benefits reach beyond local boundaries.In case of decentralization, taxes collected by members of a regionare spent only on that region's public good. In case of centralization, tax receipts from the two...

Der entwicklungsökonomische Diskurs ist aktuell geprägt durch eine kontroverseDebatte zwischen Jeffrey Sachs und William Easterly. Der Beitrag rekonstruiert beide Ansätze aus ordonomischer Perspektive. Er argumentiert, dass eine auf Kooperation angelegte Semantik vergleichsweise besser...

Idiosyncratic risk attitudes are usually assumed to be commonly knownand restricted to own payos. However, the alternatives faced by a decisionmaker often involve risks for others' payos as well. Motivated by theimportance of other-regarding preferences in social interactions, this paperexplores...

We study ultimatum and dictator experiments where the first moverchooses the amount of money to be distributed between the playerswithin a given interval, knowing that her own share is fixed. Thus, thefirst mover is faced with scarcity, but not with the typical trade-off betweenher own and the...

Why is it that well-intentioned actions can create persistent conflicts? While norms are widely regarded as a source for cooperation,this article proposes a novel theory in which the emergence of normscan be understood as a bargaining process in which normative conflicts explain the nally...