We provide a test of the role of social preferences and beliefs in voluntary cooperation and its decline. We elicit individuals' cooperation preferences in one experiment and use them as well as subjects' elicited beliefs to explain contributions to a public good played repeatedly. We find...

While most papers_new on team decision-making find teams to behave more selfish, less trusting and less altruistic than individuals, Cason and Mui (1997) report that teams are more altruistic than individuals in a dictator game. Using a within-subjects design we re-examine group polarization by...

This study attempts to combine two traditional fields in microeconomics: individual decision making under risk and decision making in an interpersonal context. The influence of social comparison on risky choices is explored in an experiment in which participants make a series of choices between...

It is now generally accepted that some people are more altruistic, more trusting, or more reciprocal than others, but it is still unclear whether these differences are innate or a consequence of nurture. We analyse the correlation between handedness and social preferences in the lab and find...

We propose an instrument to measure individuals' social preferences regarding equity and efficiency behind a veil of ignorance. We pair portfolio and wealth distribution choice problems which have a common budget set. For a given bundle, the distribution over an individual's wealth is the same...

In Becker et al. (2013a,b), we proposed a theory to explain giving behaviour in dictator experiments by a combination of selfishness and a notion of justice. The theory was tested using dictator, social planner, and veil of ignorance experiments. Here we analyse gender differences in preferences...

Is the willingness to make trades influenced by how the total gains from trade are split between the trading partners? We present results from a bilateral trade game (n = 128) where all participants were price-takers and trading pairs faced one of three exogenously imposed trading prices. The...