This paper experimentally investigates how risk attitudes mitigate leadership effectiveness in a collective setting with projects that exhibit both free riding and coordination problems. We take two novel approaches: 1) the introduction of economic game theory to psychological studies of...

Models of social preferences (i.e. inequality aversion), assuming society is defined by a hierarchy based on income or wealth, predict that the poor envy the rich. Reference Group Theory predicts that the poor (rich) envy others from the same social group or class. We report results from a game...

We report results from a multi-period game designed to stimulate anti-social preferences and to measure the cost of to a society with members who act on these preferences. There are a number of important features of our game that, while individually not unique, in total distinguish it from...

We conduct a laboratory experiment with salient incentives, a technique used by economists to study gender differences in leadership. We strip the concept of leadership down to its most basic elements. Questions of style and evaluations of a leader based on style of leadership adopted are made...

Our experimental results suggest that the effectiveness of leading by example decreases with group size. The discrepancy between the leaders' and followers' incentives increases with group size. Thus, as group size increases, followers more often refuse to follow their leaders.

We consider a leader–follower mechanism in a collective action game, which exhibits both free riding and coordination problems. Leaders can persuade group cooperation by making a costly commitment to a project. Followers can choose to follow their leaders. The project's return can be...