The study of collective action requires an understanding of the individual incentives and of the institutional constraints that guide people in making choices about cooperating or defecting on the group facing the dilemma. The use of local ecosystems by groups of individuals is just one example...

Questions remain as to whether results from experimental economics are generalizable to real decisions in nonlaboratory settings. Furthermore, questions persist about whether social capital helps mitigate information asymmetries in credit markets. I examine whether behavior in two laboratory...

Economists recognize that preferences can differ across individuals. We examine the strengths and weaknesses of lab and field experiments to detect differences in preferences that are associated with standard, observable characteristics of the individual. We consider preferences over risk and...

The internalization of external costs arising from a group dilemma between the individual and social interests require the design of institutions through the market, the state or self-governance that are able to induce in the agents a change in their pecuniary and non-material incentives so that...

Many forest ecosystems provide multiple goods and services to both local users (e.g. firewood, water) and to other external beneficiaries (biodiversity conservation, carbon sequestration). This calls for alternative approaches in the governance of these local ecosystems. Even if local users...

Despite increased use of experimental auctions, a myriad of different procedures are being employed without formal consideration of how the procedures might affect results. The study investigates the effect of several procedural issues on valuation estimates from experimental auctions. Results...

This paper develops a finite mixture distribution analysis of Beauty-Contest data obtained from diverse groups of experiments. ML estimation using the EM approach provides estimates for the means and variances of the component distributions, which are common to all the groups, and estimates of...

After a merger, company officials face the challenge of making compensation schemes uniform and of redesigning teams with managers from companies with different incentives, work habits and recruiting methods. In this paper, we investigate the relationship between executive pay and performance...

In order to test the proposition that performance in bargaining experiments is significantly affected by degree of monetarization, market integration, and relative westernization, a one-shot Ultimatum Game was conducted during the months of June and July 1998 in two villages in a rural region of...