We analyze the doping behavior of heterogeneous athletes in an environment of private information. In a n-player strategic game, modeled as an all-pay auction, each athlete has private information about his actual physical ability and choses the amount of performance-enhancing drugs. The use of...

If two players of a simultaneous symmetric one-shot prisoner's dilemma hold standard prefer-ences, the fact that choosing the cooperative move imposes harm on a passive outsider is imma-terial. Yet if participants hold social preferences, one might think that they are reticent to impose harm on...

This paper examines the influence of third-party observation and third-party reward on behavior in an experimental prisoner's dilemma (PD) game. Whereas the existing literature on third-party intervention as a means to sustain social norms has dealt almost exclusively with third-party...

This paper considers the endogenous formation of an institution to provide a public good. If the institution governs only its members, players have an incentive to free ride on the institution formation of others and the social dilemma is simply shifted to a higher level. Addressing this...

We test the assumption that preferences are unchanged throughout a strategic game in the absence of feedback. To do so, we study the relationship between the strategic nature of a game and players' identification in social groups. We present evidence that the strategic nature of the game affects...

Free riding and coordination difficulties are held to be the primary causes of cooperation breakdown among nonrelatives. These thwarting effects are particularly severe in the absence of effective monitoring institutions capable of sanctioning deviant behavior. Unfortunately, solutions to global...

Laboratory experiments by Fudenberg and Pathak (2010), and Vyrastekova, Funaki and Takeuch (2008) show that punishment is able to sustain cooperation in groups even when it is observed only in the end of the interaction sequence. Our results demonstrate that the real power of unobserved...

Funding developing countries' climate policies after Cancun (COP16) has a dual goal: firstly, to support mitigation of developing countries in order to sustain the two-degree pathway of stabilising the global mean temperature; secondly, to empower the vulnerable countries in low-income regions to...

The paper sets up a two-country asymmetric trade model with heterogeneous firms,search frictions and endogenous labor market institutions. Countries are linked by tradein goods and non-cooperatively set unemployment benefits to maximize national welfare.We show that more open and smaller...

Cooperation in international environmental agreements appears difficult to attain because of strong free-riding incentives. This paper explores how different technology spillover mechanisms among regions can influence the incentive structures to join and stabilise an international agreement. We...