We study antisocial preferences in simple money-burning tasks. A decision maker can choose whether or not to reduce another person’s payoff at an own cost. We vary across tasks the initial endowment of the decider and the victim. We find that most conventional expectations are refuted:...

The eBay Feedback Forum is claimed to be a crucial component of the success of eBay. Many empirical studies have found that this feedback system exerts a deterrent effect on the opportunistic behavior the Internet's anonymity may incite buyers and sellers to adopt. The feedback system in place...

Unethical behavior within organizations is not rare. We investigate experimentally the role of status-seeking behavior in sabotage and cheating activities aiming at improving one’s performance ranking in a flat-wage environment. We find that average effort is higher when individuals are...

Experimental studies of social dilemmas have shown that while the existence of a sanctioning institution improves cooperation within groups, it also has a detrimental impact on group earnings in the short-run. Could the introduction of pre-play threats to punish have enough of a beneficial...

In this paper, we investigate individuals’ investment in status in an environment where no monetary return can possibly be derived from reaching a better relative position. We use a real-effort experiment in which we permit individuals to learn and potentially improve their relative position...

In this paper, we investigate individuals’ investment in status in an environment where no monetary return can possibly be derived from reaching a better relative position. We use a real-effort experiment in which we permit individuals to learn and potentially improve their status (rank). We...

In this paper, we investigate individuals' investment in status in an environment where no monetary return can possibly be derived from reaching a better relative position. We use a real-effort experiment in which we permit individuals to learn and potentially improve their status (rank). We...

The authors test the hypothesis that individual effort on the job depends both on one’s own income and on the individual’s position in the relevant income distribution. Combining experimental evidence from a gift-exchange game with multi-country ISSP survey data, they analyze the extent to...