In an experimental study, we compare individual willingness to cooperate in a public good game after an initial team contest phase. While players in the treatment setup make a conscious decision on how much to invest in the contest, this decision is exogenously imposed on players in the control...

We use the strategy method to classify subjects into cooperator types in a large-scale online Public Goods Game and find that free riders spend more time on making their decisions than conditional cooperators and other cooperator types. This result is robust to reversing the framing of the game...

Greenhouse gases generate impacts that can last longer than human civilization itself. Such persistence may affect the behavioral ability to cooperate. Here we study mitigation efforts within a framework that reflects key features of climate change and then contrasts a dynamic versus a static...

Traditionally, economists make a sharp distinction between stated and revealed preferences, viewing the latter as more fully meeting the assumptions of economic analysis. Here, we consider one form of empirical evidence regarding this belief: the consistency of choices in stated and revealed...

Traditionally, economists make a sharp distinction between stated and revealed preferences, viewing the latter as more fully meeting the assumptions of economic analysis. Here, we consider one form of empirical evidence regarding this belief: the consistency of choices in stated and revealed...

Abundant evidence suggests that high levels of contributions to public goods can be sustained through self-governed monitoring and sanctions. This experimental study investigates the effectiveness of decentralized sanctioning institutions where punishment opportunities are restricted to agents...

Evidence from studies in international relations, the politics of reform, collective action and price competition suggests that economic agents in social dilemma situations cooperate more to avoid losses than in the pursuit of gains. To test whether the prospect of losses can induce cooperation,...

We consider a public goods game which incorporates guilt-aversion/surprise-seeking and the attribution of intentions behind these emotions (Battigalli and Dufwenberg, 2007; Khalmetski et al., 2015). We implement the induced beliefs method (Ellingsen et al., 2010) and a within-subjects design using...

Previous research on public-good games revealed greater contributions by fast decision-makers than by slow decision-makers. Interpreting greater contributions as generosity, this has been seen as evidence of generosity being intuitive. We caution that fast decisions are more prone to error, and...

Evidence from studies in international relations, the politics of reform, collective action and price competition suggests that economic agents in social dilemma situations cooperate more to avoid losses than in the pursuit of gains. To test whether the prospect of losses can induce cooperation,...