Little is known about the personality and cognitive traits that shape adolescents’ sensitivity to social norms. Further, few studies have harnessed novel empirical tools to elicit sensitivity to social norms among adolescent populations. This paper examines the association between sensitivity...

We propose a framework for modeling the influence of normative considerations on decision-making and social interaction. Our key insight is that axiomatic models like those used in cooperative game theory can be reinterpreted as theories of moral reasoning and norm formation which describe the...

We study a novel, repeated common pool resource game in which current resource stocks depend on resource extraction in previous periods. Our model shows that for a sufficiently high regrowth rate, there is no commons dilemma: the resource will be preserved indefinitely in equilibrium. Lower...

In a novel laboratory asset market, traders buy and sell shares of a monopolist while observing its price and transaction history in real-time. Dividends are based on the profitability of the monopolist, also an experimental subject. Despite dividend uncertainty resulting from both monopolist...

When individuals trade with strangers, there is a temptation to renege on contracts. In the absence of repeated interaction or exogenous enforcement mechanisms, this problem can impede valuable exchange. Historically, individuals have solved this problem by forming institutions that sustain...

The history of the world is strewn with the remains of societies whose institutions failed to adapt to ecological change, but the determinants of institutional fragility are difficult to identify in the historical record. We report a laboratory experiment exploring the impact of an exogenous...

Conflict and competition often impose costs on both winners and losers, and conflicting parties may prefer to resolve a dispute before it occurs. The equilibrium of a conflict game with side-payments predicts that with binding offers, proposers make and responders accept side-payments,...

We design an experiment to explore the impact of earned entitlements on the frequency and intensity of conflicts in a two-stage bargaining and conflict game with side-payments. In this game, residents (Proposers) make side-payment offers and contestants (Responders) decide whether to accept the...

When individuals trade with strangers, there is a temptation to renege on contracts. In the absence of repeated interaction or exogenous enforcement mechanisms, this problem can impede valuable exchange. Historically, individuals have solved this problem by forming institutions that sustain...