A commonly held view is that laboratory experiments provide researchers with more "control" than natural field experiments, and that this advantage is to be balanced against the disadvantage that laboratory experiments are less generalizable. This paper presents a simple model that explores...

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An important question to microfinance is the relevance of existing social capital in target communities to the performance of group lending. This research presents evidence from field experiments in South Africa and Armenia, in which subjects participate in trust games and a microfinance game....

Most charity organizations depend on contributions from the general public, but little research is conducted on donor preferences. Do donors have geographical, recipient, or thematic preferences? We designed a conjoint analysis experiment in which people rated development aid projects by...

Gender differences in competitive behavior have received much attention, demonstrating a systematic gap between males' and females' tendencies to compete. Theories predict a biological factor linked to an evolutionary response to the different paths to reproductive success for men and women....

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...

In this introduction to the symposium, I first offer an overview of the spectrum of experimental methods in economics, from laboratory experiments to the field experiments that are the subject of this symposium. I then offer some thoughts about the potential gains from doing economic research...

We implement a public goods game and a social intervention modeled after a public goods game in rural Sierra Leone near the Gola Forest Reserve. We also collect demographic, economic and forest conservation data on households in the area. We use this data to assess the mapping of social...