We define and experimentally test a public provision mechanism that meets three basic ethical requirements and allows community members to influence, via monetary bids, which of several projects is implemented. For each project, participants are assigned personal values, which can be positive or...

In this paper we present three simple theoretical models to explain the influence of the possibility to make non-binding announcements on future investment behaviour in public good settings. Our models build on the idea that voluntary contributions to the supply of a public good might be...

Personality questionnaires have been used and can be used to predict behavior in economic settings. Using two sets of state-of-the-art measures from personality psychology (the Big Six) and social psychology (Social Value Orientation), we find that the behavior of men is predictable in the first...

We present a simple two-steps procedure for a within-subject test of the inequity aversion model of Fehr and Schmidt (1999). In the first step, subjects played modified ultimatum and dictator games and were classified according to their preferences. In the second step, subjects with specific...

There is a substantial literature examining coordination in public goods games. We conducted an experiment to explore how varying patterns of thresholds affect the willingness of subjects to contribute to a public good. We had subjects play a multiperiod game where each subject was allocated an...

We use a laboratory experiment to investigate the behavioral effects of obligations that are not backed by binding deterrent incentives. To implement such expressive law' we introduce different levels of very weakly incentivized, symmetric and asymmetric minimum contribution levels (obligations)...

Because costly punishment is not credible, subgame perfection suggests that punishment will not deter free riding, regardless of the size or structure of groups. However, experiments show that people will punish free riders, even at considerable cost. To examine the implications of agents who...

Field evidence suggests that people belonging to the same group often behave similarly, i.e., behaviour exhibits social interaction effects. We conduct an experiment that avoids the identification problem present in the field. Our novel design feature is that each subject simultaneously is a...

We adopt an inter-generational approach to the public goods game where at the end of each session subjects are allowed to leave advice for the succeeding generation via free form messages. We find that a process of social learning via passing advice from one generation to the next helps increase...

We study a public goods game where subjects get feedback either continually or intermittently. We find that the intermittent feedback helps to mitigate problems of free riding because subjects in this treatment focus more on a string of choices rather than deciding on a case by case basis as in...