Nudge policies are typically justified from paternalistic premises: nudges are acceptable if they benefit the individuals who are nudged. A tacit assumption behind this strategy is that the biases of decision that choice architects attempt to eliminate generate costs that are paid mainly by the...

Although it is now recognized that norms play an important role in many economic decisions, compliance with conventions is generally considered to be driven by rational self-interest only. We report instead experimental data showing that (1) ‘external’ norms of fairness sustain social...

Recent experiments with the Dictator Game (and the ensuing discussions) have been affected by considerable confusion regarding the purpose of this design. A common complaint is that the design gives rise to fragile regularities and therefore is of little use for theory-testing. We take issue...

Group membership increases cooperation in social dilemma games, altruistic donation in dictator games, and fair offers in ultimatum games. While the empirical study of group action has grown rapidly over the years, there is little agreement at the theoretical level on exactly why and how group...

Group membership increases cooperation in social dilemma games, altruistic donation in dictator games, and fair offers in ultimatum games. While the empirical study of group action has grown rapidly over the years, there is little agreement at the theoretical level on exactly why and how group...

The focus of this paper is on altruism and coordination among children. A special form of altruism (ethical altruism) is investigated by means of experiments. The definition of altruism used here follows from A. Sen’s concept of obligation, i.e. behaviour that produces advantage for someone...

This is an experiment on the effect of norm application in a public good game. We want to investigate whether a control norm affects the contribution level differently, only in relation to the way in which the norm is applied in the game. We compare the amount of public good provided in two...