Receiving a gift can create an impulse to reciprocate, even when doing so may be inefficient and potentially harmful to a third party. For instance, after receiving bribes, people may exhibit impulses to reciprocate. This paper provides a theoretical framework for a pure gift effect on...

Temptation and self-control in intertemporal choice environments are receiving increasing attention in the theoretical economics literature. Nevertheless, there remains a scarcity of empirical evidence from controlled environments informing behavior under repeated temptations. This is...

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...

We design a novel insurance advice mechanism aimed at promoting trust and cooperation in markets with asymmetric information. In a buyer-seller game, sellers are given the option to advise buyers on whether to purchase third-party insurance against the potential losses from the opportunistic...

Previous findings on punishment have focused on environments in which the outcomes are known with certainty. In this paper, we conduct experiments to investigate how punishment affects cooperation in a two-person stochastic prisoner's dilemma environment where each person can decide whether or...

Research examining the effect of weak punishment on conformity indicates that punishment can backfire and lead to suboptimal social outcomes. We examine whether this effect is due to a lack of perceived legitimacy of rule enforcement, which would enable agents to justify selfish behavior. We...