Environmental policies provide agents with incentives to contribute to environmental protection. One concern of such policies is to create and/or maintain a variety of valuable public goods. One main difference between creating and maintaining public goods is that, while in the former, agents...

This paper reports the results of a laboratory experiment that aims at investigating the effect of manipulating reputation in the context of online decentralized feedback systems, such as eBay. Our experimental results indicate that the agents do not hesitate to manipulate their reputation even...

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...

Cooperation among people who are not related to each other is sustained by the availability of punishment devices which help enforce social norms (Fehr and Gächter, 2002). However, the rationale for costly punishment remains unclear. This paper reports the results of an experiment investigating...

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...

This paper combines ISSP survey data and experimental evidence from a gift-exchange game to determine the effect of status or relative income on work effort. We find a strong effect of others' incomes on individual effort decisions in both datasets. The individual's rank in the income...

Many empirical studies have shed light on the efficiency of peer pressure. I propose here to model peer pressure by incorporating in the utility function self centered inequity aversion. I find that opportunity for sufficiently inequity averse players to punish their peers, is effective in...

This paper reports the results of an experiment that investigates the relationships between inequality and punishment. In particular, we analyze how inter-personal comparisons affect altruistic punishment behavior. In addition, we examine how punishment affects inequality over time. We compare...

In this paper we replicate and extend the experiment of Fehr and Gaechter (2000) that analyzes the effect of an opportunity to punish others on the level contributions in the Voluntary Contributions Mechanism. The punishment is costly for both the players distributing and those receiving the...

Cet article relate les résultats d'une expérience portant sur l'effet des comparaisons de salaire sur les décisions d'effort. Les individus comparent leur salaire avec ceux des membres de leur groupe de référence et cela affecte leurs décisions. À salaire égal, les individus situés à...