In this paper we study the effect of downward social information in contribution decisions to fund public goods. We describe the results of a field experiment run in conjunction with the fundraising campaigns of a public radio station. Renewing members are presented with social information...

Previous experimental and empirical evidence has identified social preferences in the voluntary provision of public goods. A number of competing models of such preferences have been proposed. We provide evidence for one model of behavior in these games, reciprocity (or matching, or conditional...

Previous research demonstrates that individuals vary in their social preferences. Less well-understood is how group composition affects the behavior of different social preference types. Does one bad apple really spoil the bunch? This paper exogenously identifies experimental participants’...

Rent-seeking models have been used to predict and explain a wide variety of political decisions. This paper extends Tullock’s classic rent-seeking model to the case of a risky rent, where the winner of the rent-seeking contest does not receive the rent for sure, but only...