We study the behavior of individuals coming from different geographic regions of Italy, in a same public good game. We confirm previous findings according to which, faced with the same incentives and experimental conditions, Southern citizens exhibit a lower propensity to cooperate than Northern...

Social trust has enchanted social scientists due to its importance for both cooperation within societies and economic performance. This paper provides a novel empirical study of whether external conflict affects trust. The possible ways that conflict could be related to trust are theoretically...

We test a mechanism whereby groups are formed voluntarily, through the use of voting. These groups play a public-goods game, where efficiency increases with group size (up to a limit, in one treatment). It is feasible to exclude group members, to exit one's group, or to form larger groups...

This paper considers a model of incomplete information with selfish rational types and types who comply with social or moral norms by intrinsic motivation. We explore 'complier optimal norms', which maximize expected average utility of all compliant types given that the norms are commonly known....