Does self-governance, a hallmark of democratic societies, foster or erode norms of generalized cooperation? Does this effect persist, and if so, why? I investigate these questions using a natural experiment in Switzerland. In the middle-ages, the absence of an heir resulted in the extinction of...

Previous research has shown that opportunities for two-sided partner choice in finitely repeated social dilemma games can promote cooperation through a combination of sorting and opportunistic signaling, with late period defections by selfish players causing an end-game decline. How such...

This paper studies adaptive learning in the class of weighted network games. This class of games includes applications like research and development within interlinked firms, crime within social networks, the economics of pollution, and defense expenditures within allied nations. We show that...

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...

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...

We investigate leading by example in a public goods game in scenarios with and without intergroup competition. Leading by example is implemented via a sequential decision protocol. We examine both one-shot and repeated interaction and make use of the strategy method to characterize followers'...

Koukoumelis et al. (2010, 2012) have shown that one-way communication enhances contributions to public goods. We investigate the effectiveness of one-way communication, when the benefits from the public good are asymmetric and the sender of a message is the main beneficiary of cooperation. Our...

The private provision of public goods suffers from two potential types of efficiency failures: non-optimal output levels of the public good (quantity problem) and an inefficient mix of contributors and non-contributors (sorting problem). Embedding the provision game into a contest that rewards...

We analyze if and how multi-prize Tullock contests can be used to guarantee efficient contributions to a public good when agents are heterogenous both with respect to the costs of production of the public good and with respect to the utility from its consumption. With two types of individuals,...

We propose the minimum approval mechanism (MAM) for a standard linear public good environment with two players. Players simultaneously and privately choose their contributions to the public good in the first stage. In the second stage, they simultaneously decide whether to approve the other’s...