This paper reports the results of an experimental investigation which allows a deeper insight into the nature of social preferences amongst organized criminals and how these differ from "ordinary" criminals on the one hand and from the non‐criminal population in the same geographical area on...

This paper revisits the tragedy of the commons when agents have different capabilities in both production and encroachment activities, and can allocate their time between them. Under fairly general assumptions on production and encroachment technologies, an individual's expected income is convex...

This paper revisits the tragedy of the commons when agents have different capabilities in both production and encroachment activities, and can allocate their time between them. Under fairly general assumptions on production and encroachment technologies, an individual's expected income is convex...

The paper presents a simulation of the dynamics of impersonal trust. It shows how a 'trust/reciprocation' norm can emerge and stabilize in populations of conditional cooperators. The norm, or behavioral regularity, is not to be identified with a single strategy. It is instead supported by...

This paper builds on an analytical tool for studying entrepreneurship in a new classical general equilibrium framework. The entrepreneurial economy model takes the consumer-producer economy model and makes explicit the role of the entrepreneur. This paper uses it to study entrepreneurial...

Social engineering refers to deliberate attempts, often under the form of legislative moves, to promote changes in customs and norms that hurt the interests of marginalized population groups. This paper explores the analytical conditions under which social engineering is more or less likely to...

Social engineering refers to deliberate attempts, often under the form of legislative moves, to promote changes in customs and norms that hurt the interests of marginalized population groups. This paper explores the analytical conditions under which social engineering is more or less likely to...

Robert Aumann's agreement theorem and subsequent work shows that people who are rational in a certain Bayesian sense cannot agree to disagree on matters of fact, as long as there is common knowledge of this common rationality. This result hinges on a type of epistemic impartiality: a rational...

We apply a fallback model of coalition formation to decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, focusing on the seven natural courts, which had the same members for at least two terms, between 1969 and 2009. The predictions of majority coalitions on each of the courts are generally bourn out by the 5-4...

How can a single player defend against the threat of a coordinated attack by a group? For example, how can a central bank defend a currency peg against speculators, a government against a revolution or a prison warden against a breakout? Bentham (1787) proposed an innovative prison concept based...