In real life, punishment is often implemented only insofar as punishers are entitled to punish and punishees deserve to be punished. We provide an experimental test for this principle of legitimacy in the framework of a public goods game, by comparing it with a classic (unrestricted) punishment...

We experimentally investigate cooperation within a finitely repeated public goods game framework where peer punishment is possible but, unlike previous work, in each round access to sanctioning power is exclusively awarded to the group’s top contributor. We compare this mechanism with a...

Is culture an important variable to explain whether groups can successfully provide public goods? A wealth of empirical evidence on both industrialized and developing countries shows that cooperation levels decrease in the presence of ethnic divisions. Although several laboratory works deal with...

Empirical evidence about innovation is doubtful in showing incumbent firms' and new entrants' attitude toward radical innovations. Moreover, theoretical works exhibit divergent conclusions when investigating the incentives to innovate. Our paper emphasizes the importance of distinguishing...

In dealing with peer punishment as a cooperation enforcement device, laboratory studies have typically concentrated on discretionary sanctioning, allowing players to castigate each other arbitrarily. By contrast, in real life punishments are often meted out only insofar as punishers are entitled...

<title>Abstract</title> The pervasiveness of the entrepreneurial phenomenon draws scholars’ attention to what determines the decision to become an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurial decisions imply judgemental decisions. Different approaches in economics conceive such judgemental decisions as firm entry, or real...

The pervasiveness of the entrepreneurial phenomenon attracts the attention on the determinants of the decision of becoming entrepreneur. As the entrepreneurial decision can be additionally conceived as firm entry, as a real business investment in the creation of a new business and as a career...

Excess entry refers to the high failure rate of new entrepreneurial ventures. Economic explanations suggest 'hit and run' entrants and risk-seeking behavior. A psychological explanation is that people (entrepreneurs) are overconfident in their abilities (Camerer & Lovallo, 1999). Characterizing...

Recent empirical evidence about innovation shows that established firms rarely invest in radical innovation but incrementally improve the existing technology. Revolutionary breakthroughs are more likely to be introduced by new entrants. These stylized facts motivate a renewed attention of the...

A stylized fact shows that firms rarely seek for radical breakthroughs and more frequently invest in small improvements of the existing technology. This paper proposes a model that compares firms’ value when firms can invest in strategies implying different degrees of innovativeness. The model...