We devise a new experimental game by nesting a voluntary contributions mechanism in a broader spectrum of incentive schemes. With it, we study tensions between egalitarianism, equity concerns, self-interest, and the need for incentives. In a 2x2 design, subjects either vote on or exogenously...

This paper addresses the impact of a crisis situation on trust and trustworthiness in the laboratory. The experiment is based on an adapted version of the trust game by Berg et al. (1995) and tries to shed light on the question if crisis situations affect trust relationships. Analyzing...

Since 1950s, most African nations have gained independence from their colonial powers. Fortunately, independence has brought many changes to these nations and these include multi-party democratic government and western education systems. Unfortunately, the Africa's economy is the least developed...

This paper presents a laboratory experiment that studies the effects of costly monitoring and heterogeneous social identities on an equity principle of reward allocation. In particular, the investigation is based on a two-stage mechanism where a production phase is followed by a distribution...

We present an explanation of the high frequency of team production and high level of peer monitoring found in Japanese firms, in terms of a simple and empirically grounded variation in individual utility functions. We argue that Japanese agents are generally characterized by a higher degree,...

In reciprocal interactions, both genuine kindness and self-interested material gain may motivate socially beneficial actions. The paper presents results from two experiments that distinguish the role of perceived motives in reciprocal decision making from the role of outcomes or perceived...

The conflict between pro-self and pro-social behaviour is at the core of many key problems of our time, as, for example, the reduction of air pollution and the redistribution of scarce resources. For the well-being of our societies, it is thus crucial to find mechanisms to promote pro-social...

Income redistribution with an efficiency loss is expected to have a twofold negative effect on voters' support for redistribution, as it lowers aggregate egoistic support for redistribution and activates voters' efficiency preferences. The paper is dedicated to test whether such a negative...

Many institutions use matching algorithms to allocate resources to individuals. Examples include the assignment of doctors, students and military cadets to hospitals, schools and branches, respectively. Oftentimes, agents' ordinal preferences are highly correlated, motivating the use of...

We study the relationship between pro-social preferences and strategic reasoning. These aspects are typically studied separately but little is known about their joint distribution. In an experiment, for each participant we elicit individual concerns toward pro-sociality — inequality aversion...