We develop a dynamic model where people decide in the presence of moral constraints and test the predictions of the model through two experiments. Norm violations induce a temporal feeling of guilt that depreciates with time. Due to such fluctuations of guilt, people exhibit an endogenous...

Constructing compensation schemes for effort in multi-dimensional tasks is complex, particularly when some dimensions are not easily observable. When incentive schemes contractually reward workers for easily observed measures, such as quantity produced, the standard model predicts that...

Direct reciprocity means to respond in kind to another person whereas indirect reciprocity is understood here as rewarding someone else. We perform corresponding experiments which use a similar underlying structure as the reciprocity experiment of Berg, Dickhaut, and McCabe (1995). Another...

Experimental studies of risk and time-preference typically focus on one of the two phenomena. The goal of this paper is to investigate the (possible) correlation between subjects' attitude to risk and their time-preference. For this sake we ask 61 subjects to price a simple lottery in 3...

Individuals frequently transfer commodities without an explicit contract or an implicit enforcement mechanism. We design an experiment to study whether such commodity transfers can be viewed as investments based on trust and reciprocity, or whether they rather resemble presents with...

The functioning and well-being of any society and organization critically hinges on norms of cooperation that regulate social activities. Empirical evidence on how such norms emerge and in which environments they thrive remains a clear void in the literature. To provide an initial set of...

This study investigates how information on solicitors' compensation affects charitable giving in a door-to-door field experiment with more than 2,800 households. We vary whether solicitors are paid or not and the information about this compensation that potential donors receive. Relative to the...

Social norms permeate society across a wide range of issues and are important to understanding how societies function. In this paper we concentrate on 'bad' social norms - those that are inefficient or even damaging to a group. This paper explains how bad social norms evolve and persist; our...

It is estimated that a trillion dollars are annually exchanged in bribes, distorting justice and economic efficiency. In a novel experiment, we investigate the drivers of bribery. Two participants compete for a prize; a referee picks the winner. Participants can bribe the referee. When the...

Can incentives be effective when trying to encourage the development of good habits? We investigate the effect of paying people a non-trivial amount of money to attend an exercise facility a number of times during a one-month period. In two separate studies, we find that doing so leads to a...