A central question in the study of altruism has been whether there is a systematic gender difference in giving behavior. Most experimental economics research has found that women are more generous than men. Evidence also suggests that gender differences depend upon the price of giving: males are...

This paper compares the social norms of distributive transfers within village communities in the north and south of Vietnam by analyzing household survey and experimental data. The results of household data analysis show private transfers flow from high-income households to low-income households...

We conduct a remittance field experiment among Salvadoran migrants in the metro DC area. Migrants need to decide whether or not to remit funds to a recipient in El Salvador and if so how much. We maintain a (2x2) design in which the remittance budget has a value of $400 or $200, and the remitted...

Results are reported of the first natural field experiment on the dictator game, where subjects are unaware that they participate in an experiment. In contrast to predictions of the standard economic model, dictators show a large degree of pro-social behavior. This paper builds a bridge from the...

It is difficult to identify acts that are purely altruistic, and do not have some level of egoism or self-interest involved. By considering situations where team members seemingly have nothing to gain by the way they distribute points to others with regard to peer evaluation, and where their...

This paper shows that social interactions can induce families of migrants to care about hierarchical social status because it serves as a signal device of non-observable income. Hence , a concern for social status induces theses families to engage in conspicuous consumption in order to signal...

Based on an experiment conducted with undergraduate students from three different majors (business economics, psychology and engineering), we study the relationship between honesty and altruism. We asked participants to toss a coin with a black and a white side. Participants won a chocolate if...

Expected utility theory views the individual investment decision as a tradeoff between immediate consumption and deferred consumption. But individuals do not always prefer according to the classical theory of economics. Recent studies on individual investor behavior have shown that they do not...

There is evidence that 9-ending prices are more common and more rigid than other prices. We use data from three sources: a laboratory experiment, a field study, and a large US supermarket chain, to study the cognitive underpinning and the ensuing asymmetry in rigidity associated with 9-ending...

This study measures risk and loss aversion using Prospect Theory and the impact of emotions on those parameters. Our controlled experiment at two universities in Mexico City, using uncompensated students as research subjects, found results similar to those obtained by Tanaka et al. (2010). In...