According to popular belief, frogs are boiled to death when the water is heated gradually. In this paper, we investigate how humans respond to a very slow versus a very steep increase of a subsidy on contributions to a public good. In an experiment, we vary the mode of the increase (gradual...

We investigate the effects of information feedback in rent-seeking games with two different contest structures. In the share contest a contestant receives a share of the rent equal to her share of rent-seeking expenditures, while in the lottery contest a contestant wins the entire rent with...