We examine the link between social institutions and individuals' propensity to cooperate in a simple game theoretic framework. To begin, we transform the usual prisoner's dilemma game over material payoffs into one with utility payoffs by including non-material preferences. By introducing a...

The term 'sustainable consumption' denotes the search for consumption patterns that reduce human pressure on the environment and nature. This search involves three levels of research. First, the relationship between consumption, lifestyles and environmental sustainability has to be clarified. A...

Tough anti-terrorism policies are often defended by focusing on a fixed minority of dangerous people who prefer violent outcomes, and arguing that toughness reduces the risk of terrorism from this group. This reasoning implicitly assumes that tough policies do not increase the group of...

A long-standing discussion in economics asks whether institutions affect people’s social predispositions. The current experiment tests whether different aspects of markets affect people’s social preferences. The results are that people are less socially minded in more anonymous...

There are compelling reasons to believe there is an unhealthy growth imperative inherent in private enterprise market systems that threatens the environment. Unfortunately, many who criticize a dysfunctional growth imperative fail to make a compelling case. This article argues that too often...

This article pays homage to E. K. Hunt who was a founding member of URPE who helped build chapters on several campuses in western states. Much of the author’s own research work over the past forty years was an attempt to strengthen criticisms Hunt voiced long ago about markets and blind...

In this article we study the implication of thresholds in preferences. To model this we extend the basic model of John and Pecchenino (1994) by allowing the current level of environmental quality to have a discrete impact on how an agent trades off future consumption and environmental quality....

An important difficulty in many models of behavioral economics is that preferences are endogenous and unstable. Therefore, preferences may not provide the most desirable yardstick to evaluate social states. This paper proposes unconditional love as a candidate for such a yardstick. The concept...

This model provides a mechanism explaining the surge in environmental culture across the globe. We discuss empirical evidence on the determinants of environmental culture and preferences. Based upon this empirical evidence, we develop an overlapping generations model with environmental quality...