Considerable experimental evidence shows that although costly peer-punishment enhances cooperation in repeated public-good games, heavy punishment in early rounds leads to average period payoffs below the non-cooperative equilibrium benchmark. In an environment where past payoffs determine...

An impure public good is a commodity that combines public and private characteristics in fixed proportions. Green goods such as dolphin-friendly tuna or green electricity programs provide increasings popular examples of impure goods. We design an experiment to test how the presence of impure...

Human conduct is often guided by “conformist preferences”, which thrive on behavioral expectations within a society, with conformity being the act of changing one’s behavior to match the purported beliefs of others. Despite a growing research line considering preferences for a fair outcome...

The need for justification is a widely observed social phenomenon. This paper develops a theoretical framework and reports laboratory evidence to show how pure justification pressure affects cooperative behavior in economic exchange environments. In a one-shot anonymous interaction, compared...

We investigate voluntary contribution to public goods in culturally heterogeneous groups with a laboratory experiment conducted among 432 Hindu and Muslim subjects in India. With our specification of 'Leading by example' we test for an interaction effect between leadership and religious...

The current social dilemma literature lacks theoretical consensus regarding how individuals behave when facing multiple simultaneous social dilemmas. The divided-loyalty hypothesis, from organizational theory, predicts that cooperation will decline as individuals experience multiple social...

Ethnic diversity and provision of public goods have long been understood to share a negative relationship. While there has been a concerted effort to define and measure ethnic diversity around the world, we are interested in analyzing the possible differences in these measures when it comes to...

Coase originally formulated his conjecture about intertemporal price competition in the context of a land market, but it has been applied almost exclusively to non-spatial markets. This paper revisits the Coase Conjecture in the context of land development and urban institutions. I compare four...

We study games where voluntary contributions can be adjusted until a steady state is found. In consent games contributions start at zero and can be increased by consent, and in dissent games contributions start high and can be decreased by dissent. Equilibrium analysis predicts free riding in...

In this paper we empirically examine whether public facilities like providing primary school, medical clinics, electricity etc help incumbents to stay in power. Specifically, we analyze the parliamentary election outcomes in 483 constituents in rural India from 1971 to 1991. This study is based...