We study the impact of cognitive load in dictator games to test two conflicting views of moral behavior. Are social preferences skindeep in the sense that they are the result of humans’ cognitive reasoning while the natural instinct is selfish, or is rather the natural instinct to share fairly...

We contribute to the theory of the firm by experimentally investigating a bilateral trade relationship in which standard theory assuming self-regarding preferences predicts that the seller will be better off by investing in the outside option to improve his bargaining position. The seller’s...

Empirical evidence suggests that people’s maximum willingness to pay for having a good is often substantially lower than their minimum willingness to accept not having it, and that this discrepancy tends to be especially large when valuing public goods. This paper hypothesizes that differences...

This paper examines the attitude towards relative position or status among rural households in Vietnam. On average, the respondents show weaker preferences for relative position than in comparable studies in Western countries. Possible explanations are the emphasis on the importance of equality...

We find, using survey-experimental methods, that most individuals are concerned with both relative income and relative consumption of particular goods. The degree of concern varies in the expected direction depending on the properties of the good. However, contrary to what has been suggested in...

Empirical as well as experimental evidence strongly suggests that bidders in common value auctions typically do not conform to the requirements of perfect rationality. Eyster and Rabin (2005) develop a theory and an equilibrium concept - x-cursed equilibrium - for bounded rational bidding in...

While many earlier studies have found that people’s maximum willingness to pay for having a good is often substantially lower than their minimum willingness to accept not having it, more recent experimental evidence suggests that this discrepancy vanishes for standard consumption goods when an...

It has recently been argued that giving is spontaneous while greed is calculated (Rand et al. 2012). If greed is calculated we would expect that cognitive load, which is assumed to reduce the influence of cognitive processes, should affect greed. In this paper we study both charitable giving and...