This paper examines whether exposure to persistent resource scarcity on the commons affects pastoralists' readiness to engage in antisocial behavior towards their fellow commons users. The region under study is divided into two areas according to exogenous variations in biomass production...

Credence goods markets are characterized by asymmetric information between sellers and consumers that may give rise to inefficiencies, such as under- and overtreatment or market break-down. We study in a large experiment with 936 participants the determinants for efficiency in credence goods...

Recent research has shown that women shy away from competition more often than men. We evaluate experimentally three alternative policy interventions to promote women in competitions: Quotas, Preferential Treatment, and Repetition of the Competition unless a critical number of female winners is...

We study experimentally the relationship between distributional preferences and competitive behavior. We find that spiteful subjects react strongest to competitive pressure and win in a tournament significantly more often than efficiency-minded and inequality averse subjects. However, when given...

We study gender differences in the willingness to compete in a large-scale experiment with 1,035 children and teenagers, aged three to eighteen years. Using an easy math task for children older than eight years and a running task for the younger ones we find that boys are much more likely to...

We introduce the experimental vendetta game. Two groups of four players each interact over ten identical rounds. In each round each player decides whether or not to reduce the payoff of each member of the other group, at an own cost. Reducing payoffs entails no material benefit for either the...

While numerous experiments demonstrate how pro-sociality can influence economic decision-making, evidence on explicitly anti-social economic behavior has thus far been limited. In this paper we investigate the importance of spite in experimental rent-seeking contests. Although, as we show,...

This paper presents a "second generation" theory on the nature of social preferences. Incorporating an inter-temporal ingredient, we generate an outcome-based model which focuses on the conflict between cooperation towards social efficiency and competition for the individual relative standing....

This paper presents a “second generation” theory on the nature of social preferences. Incorporating an inter-temporal ingredient, we generate an outcome-based model which focuses on the conflict between cooperation towards social efficiency and competition for the individual relative...