In many economic situations, individuals with different bargaining power must agree on how to divide a given resource. For instance, in the dictator game the proposer has all the bargaining power. In spite of it, the majority of controlled experiments show that she shares an important amount of...

Are competitive mechanisms perceived as just sources of economic inequality? Perceptions of fairness violations can have severe economic consequences, as they may cause counterproductive behavior such as rule book slowdowns or quality shading. To analyze fairness perceptions associated with...

This paper analyzes which type of intrinsic preferences drive an agent's behavior in a sequential public good game depending on whether the agent is first or second mover. Theoretical predictions are based on heterogeneity of individuals in terms of social and risk preferences. We modelize...

Inequality aversion is a key motive for punishment, with many prominent studies suggesting people use punishment to reduce or eliminate inequality. Punishment in laboratory games, however, is nearly always designed to promote equality (e.g., rejections in standard ultimatum games) and the...

This paper uses an economic experiment to identify the presence of descriptive norms associated with the jointly determined division of a surplus. We consider the results from a two-stage experiment in which participants contribute to a common pool which is then divided using a coordination game...

We present an explanation of the high frequency of team production and high level of peer monitoring found in Japanese firms, in terms of a simple and empirically grounded variation in individual utility functions. We argue that Japanese agents are generally characterized by a higher degree,...

We use a revealed preference approach to develop tests for the observed behavior to be consistent with theories of social preferences. In particular, we provide nonparametric criteria for the observed set of choices to be generated by inequality averse preferences and increasing benevolence...

The conflict between pro-self and pro-social behaviour is at the core of many key problems of our time, as, for example, the reduction of air pollution and the redistribution of scarce resources. For the well-being of our societies, it is thus crucial to find mechanisms to promote pro-social...

Income redistribution with an efficiency loss is expected to have a twofold negative effect on voters' support for redistribution, as it lowers aggregate egoistic support for redistribution and activates voters' efficiency preferences. The paper is dedicated to test whether such a negative...