We explore the role of cognitive dissonance in dictator and public goods games. Specifically, we motivate cognitive dissonance between one's perception of “fair treatment” and self-interested behaviour by having participants answer a question about fairness. Utilizing two manipulations...

I study allocations and beliefs about allocations in taking and giving games. The allocations are not significantly different between the two games, providing evidence on the isomorphism (equivalence) of taking and giving. In both games, the passive players are pessimistic about (underestimate)...

Fischbacher and Gaechter (AER, 2010) find that contributions decline in repeatedly played public good games because people are imperfect conditional cooperators who match others' contributions only partly. We re-examine the data using dynamic panel data methods and find that contributions also...

This paper examines how group composition affects conditional cooperation in a repeated voluntary contribution mechanism linear public good game. Identity was created using a team-building activity and subjects were assigned to groups of six consisting of a varying number of subjects from two...

This paper examines the effects of community characteristics on volunteering using data from two cycles of the Canadian Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating (2004 and 2007). Controlling for many individual factors, we find evidence that in 2004, volunteering was decreasing in...

We use instrumental variables for estimating the causal effect of beliefs on contributions in repeated public good games. The effect is about half as large as suggested by ordinary least squares. Thus, we present evidence that beliefs have a causal effect on contributions, but also that beliefs...