The education systems of many countries emphasize the development of prosocial preferences. Clarifying how these preferences are related to well-being is therefore essential. Although many studies have shown that particular prosocial behaviors increase subjective well-being, it is unclear...

Policies and explicit private incentives designed for self-regarding individuals sometimes are less effective or even counterproductive when they diminish altruism, ethical norms and other social preferences. Evidence from 51 experimental studies indicates that this crowding out effect is...

It is standard in experimental economics to use decontextualized designs where payoff structures are presented using neutral language. Here we show that cooperation in such a neutrally framed Prisoner’s Dilemma is equivalent to a PD framed as contributing to a cooperative endeavour....

We study if and how social preferences extend to risky environments. By providing experimental evidence on different versions of “dictator games” with risky outcomes, we establish that social preferences of players who give in standard dictator games cannot be described solely by concerns...

It has long been standard in agency theory to search for incentive-compatible mechanisms on the assumption that people care only about their own material wealth. However, this assumption is clearly refuted by numerous experiments, and we feel that it may be useful to consider nonpecuniary...

Much of the recent history of intellectual property has been a move from status to contract, resulting in an unchecked expansion of controls over knowledge beyond the boundaries once drawn in IP law. When employers introduce these contractual arrangements as standard HR provisions, they are...

We devise an experiment to explore the effect of different degrees of competition on optimal contracts in a hidden-information context. In our benchmark case, each principal is matched with one agent of unknown type. In our second treatment, a principal can select one of three agents, while in a...

We devise an experiment to explore the effect of different degrees of competition on optimal contracts in a hidden-information context. In our benchmark case, each principal is matched with one agent of unknown type. In our second treatment, a principal can select one of three agents, while in a...

It is standard in agency theory to search for incentive-compatible mechanisms on the assumption that people care only about their own material wealth. Yet it may be useful to consider social forces in mechanism design and contract theory. We devise an experiment to explore optimal contracts in a...

Subjective evaluations are widely used, but call for different contracts from traditional moral-hazard settings. Previous literature shows that contracts require payments to third parties, which real-world contracts rarely use. I show that the implicit assumption of deterministic contracts makes...