In this working paper we report on two trust games: a BDM-like game which is interpreted through its use of the possibly suggestive words “show up fee,” “sends,” “tripled,” “send back”; and an uninterpreted spatial game that does not use these words suggestive or not. In the...

We introduce new treatments of a voluntary contribution mechanism with opportunities to punish, to see how contributions and punishments change when (a) each dollar lost in punishment must be awarded to another team member and/or when (b) obtaining information on individuals' contributions is a...

The fact that many people take it upon themselves to impose costly punishment on free riders helps to explain why collective action sometimes succeeds despite the prediction of received theory. But while individually imposed sanctions lead to higher contributions in public goods experiments,...

In a public goods experiment with the opportunity to vote to expel members of a group, we found that contributions rose to nearly 100% of endowments with significantly higher efficiency compared with a coexpulsion baseline. Expulsions were strictly of the lowest contributors, and there was an...

Recent experiments have shown that voluntary punishment of free riders can increase contributions, mitigating the free-rider problem. But frequently punishers punish high contributors, creating “perverse†incentives which can undermine the benefits of voluntary punishment. In our...

We find that a process of voluntary association where individuals express a preference about whom they want to be associated with can create strong incentives to increase efficiency and contributions in provision of a public good. This process of endogenous group formation perfectly sorted...

We introduce new treatments of a voluntary contribution mechanism with opportunities to punish in order to see how contributions, punishments and earnings change when punishment is in the form of fines the punisher distributes to other members of her group. The linked punishment-reward set up is...

When subjects can make non-binding announcements of possible contributions to a public good numerically, there is no effect on average level of contributions in a public goods experiment relative to play without announcements. But a detailed analysis of this experiment shows that pre-play...