We study resource allocation within households in Côte d'Ivoire. In Côte d'Ivoire, as in much of Africa, husbands and wives farm separate plots, and there is some specialization by gender in the crops that are grown. These different crops are differentially sensitive to particular kinds of...

Many markets have organizations that influence or try to establish norms concerning when offers can be made, accepted and rejected. Examining a dozen previously studied markets suggests that markets in which transactions are made far in advance are markets in which it is acceptable for firms to...

This study investigates the differential effectiveness of cultural values and normative beliefs as predictors of behavior in a competitive group decision-making task in three countries, Israel, Japan, and the United States. Its purpose is to test hypotheses about how cultural values and norms...

We analyze the dynamics of neighborhood watch programs in a local interaction framework. Agents can watch their neighbors' houses and, thus, deter burglars from breaking in. At the same time, agents also try to recruit their neighbors to join the neighborhood watch program. The probability of an...

Behind my reciprocation of a friend's gift may lie both instrumental reasons (I expect further future gifts) and 'communicative' reasons (I want to establish or confirm a friendship per se). In a theory of rational individual action, such 'communicative' reasons can be incorporated as an...

We adopt an inter-generational approach to the public goods game where one generation of subjects leave advice for the succeeding generation via free form messages. Such advice can be private knowledge (advice left by one player in generation t is given only to her immediate successor in...

The effectiveness of efficiency wage incentives is often jeopardized by perverse organizational corruption. We model organizational corruption as a phenomenon of social interaction and relate the substantial psychological role characterizing the social norm to the corruption problem. We find...