Prior research demonstrates a willingness to incur costs to punish norm violators. But, how strong are the motives underlying such acts? Will people rely on "excuses" to avoid acting on costly punishment intentions, as with other costly pro-social acts? In a laboratory experiment, we find that...

This paper studies the stability of socially responsible behavior in markets. We develop a laboratory product market in which low-cost production creates a negative externality for third parties, but where alternative production with higher costs entirely mitigates the externality. Our data...

Each of n = 1 identical buyers (and m = 1 identical sellers) wants to buy (sell) a single unit of an indivisible good. The core predicts a unique and extreme outcome: the entire surplus is split evenly among the buyers when m n and among the sellers when m n; the long side gets nothing. We...

The paper studies the role of information transparency on fairness concerns, welfare and efficiency. When the firm's productivity and ultimately profits are revealed, wage offers induce relatively fair divisions of potential gains and workers respond with higher performance. Workers respond not...