Cet article relate les résultats d'une expérience portant sur l'effet des comparaisons de salaire sur les décisions d'effort. Les individus comparent leur salaire avec ceux des membres de leur groupe de référence et cela affecte leurs décisions. À salaire égal, les individus situés à...

This paper considers the effect of status or relative income on work effort, combining experimental evidence from a gift-exchange game with the analysis of multi-country ISSP survey data. We find a consistent negative effect of others’ incomes on individual effort in both datasets. The...

Cooperation among people who are not related to each other is sustained by the availability of punishment devices which help enforce social norms (Fehr and Gächter, 2002). However, the rationale for costly punishment remains unclear. This paper reports the results of an experiment investigating...

We use skin conductance responses and self-reports of hedonic valence to study the emotional basis of cooperation and punishment in a social dilemma. Emotional reaction to free-riding incites individuals to apply sanctions when they are available. The application of sanctions activates a...

This paper reports on the results of a laboratory experiment aiming at investigating the effects of wage comparisons on effort. Individuals compare to each others and such comparisons do affect their decisions. For a given absolute wage, those who get a lower rank in the distribution decrease...

In this paper, we investigate individuals' investment in status in an environment where no monetary return can possibly be derived from reaching a better relative position. We use a real-effort experiment in which we permit individuals to learn and potentially improve their relative position in...

Experimental studies of social dilemmas have shown that while the existence of a sanctioning institution improves cooperation within groups, it also has a detrimental impact on group earnings in the short-run. Could the introduction of pre-play threats to punish have enough of a beneficial...