From a public database in Sweden we obtained a subject pool consisting of one group 20 years old and another group that was exactly 50 years older. The groups participated in a mail-based trust game. In the trust game the young cohort exhibited significantly more trust than the old cohort did....

Undergraduates in Tanzania and Sweden participated in one Trust game, one Dictator game, and answered a standard set of survey questions relating to trust. In both countries we detected a strong and significant relation between Dictator donations and proportions returned in Trust games, which...

Undergraduates in Tanzania were exposed to one Trust game, one Dictator game and a standard set of survey questions relating to trust. We demonstrate that the survey questions neither predicts trust behavior nor trustworthiness as previously claimed by Glaeser et al. (2000). It is also shown...

Being the leader in a group often involves making risky decisions that affect the payoffs of all members, and the decision to take this responsibility in a group is endogenous in many contexts. In this paper, we experimentally study: (1) the willingness of men and women to make risky decisions...

Trust is fragile. It is hard to build but easy to destroy. In this paper, we explore the fragility of trust in a stylized laboratory environment. We ask whether transgression outside a direct send-and-return relationship destroys trust and, if so, whether a competition against outsiders or an...

Do democratically chosen rules lead to more cooperation and, hence, higher efficiency, than imposed rules? To discuss when such a "dividend of democracy" obtains, we review experimental studies in which material incentives remain stacked against cooperation (i.e., free-riding incentives prevail)...

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...