Many societies today are experiencing growing inequality in terms of wealth, income, health, education, resources or opportunities, trends that have negative effects upon well-being, trust, and motivation. We investigated whether inequalities –– particularly those perceived as fair ––...

Most economic models are based on the self-interest hypothesis that assumes that all people are exclusively motivated by their material self-interest. In recent years experimental economists have gathered overwhelming evidence that systematically refutes the self-interest hypothesis and suggests...

This paper surveys recent experimental and field evidence on the impact of concerns for fairness, reciprocity and altruism on economic decision making. It also reviews some new theoretical attempts to model the observed behavior.

This paper reports on a two-task principal-agent experiment in which only one task is contractible. The principal can either offer a piece-rate contract or a (voluntary) bonus to the agent. Bonus contracts strongly outperform piece rate contracts. Many principals reward high efforts on both...

Most economic models are based on the self-interest hypothesis that assumes that all people are exclusively motivated by their material self-interest. In recent years experimental economists have gathered overwhelming evidence that systematically refutes the self-interest hypothesis and suggests...

Most economic models are based on the self-interest hypothesis that assumes that material self-interest exclusively motivates all people. Experimental economists have gathered overwhelming evidence in recent years, however, that systematically refutes the self-interest hypothesis, suggesting...

Starting from Schelling (1960), several game theorists have conjectured that payoff equity might facilitate coordination in normal-form games with multiple equilibria - the more equitable equilibrium might be selected either because fairness makes it focal or because many individuals dislike...

A burgeoning literature in economics has started examining the role of social norms in explaining economic behavior. Surprisingly, the vast majority of this literature has studied social norms in asocial decision settings, where individuals are observed to act in isolation from each other. In...

This paper investigates physiological responses to perceptions of unfair pay. We use an integrated approach exploiting complementarities between controlled lab and representative panel data. In a simple principal-agent experiment agents produce revenue by working on a tedious task. Principals...