Latent payback is a natural element of social interactions: Non-cooperators face substantial threats of not being supported in situations of dire need, or of being punished in seemingly unrelated situations. In the controlled environment of the laboratory, we experimentally explore the effects...

The provision of public goods often relies on voluntary contributions and cooperation. While most of the experimental literature focuses on individual contributions, many real-world problems involve the formation of institutions among subgroups (coalitions) of players. International agreements...

Providing public goods is hard, because providers are best off free-riding. Is it even harder if one group's public good is a public bad for another group or, conversely, gives the latter a windfall profit? We experimentally study public goods provision embedded in a social context and find that...