Recent studies have reported surprising increases in pro-social behavior following exposure to conflict. However, our research provides cautionary evidence of some important detrimental effects of conflict hidden within an overall trend toward increasing certain pro-social preferences. We draw...

A laboratory experiment studies coordination and cooperation in games played in different networks - local, random and small-world. Coordination on the payoff-dominant equilibrium was faster in small-world networks than in local and random networks. However, in a prisoner's dilemma game,...

We design an experiment to examine the causal effect of legal institutional quality on informal norms of cooperation, and study the interaction of institutions and culture in sustaining economic exchange. 346 subjects in Italy and Kosovo play a market game under different and randomly allocated...

Our research provides experimental and survey evidence on the pro-social behavior (trust, reciprocity, a sense of fairness) and preferences for anonymous market transactions of former combatants. Our results, from a random sample in post-war Tajikistan, show that trust, reciprocity, generosity...

Recent studies have reported surprising increases in pro-social behavior following exposure to conflict. However, our research provides cautionary evidence of some important detrimental effects of conflict hidden within an overall trend toward increasing certain pro-social preferences. We draw...

We examine a novel hypothesis that roots human prosociality in the need to elicit and sustain help from others for the purpose of raising children, i.e. allomaternal care. We design an economic experiment to characterize the relationship between allomaternal care and cooperative behavior among a...