The article suggests a new explanation for cooperation in large, unstructured societies that avoids the restrictions required in most previous attempts. Our explanation deals with the role of internalized norms. Even internalized norms, i.e. norms that alter the perceived utility from acting in...

Economists have a long tradition in identifying the evolution of cooperation in large, unstructured societies as a puzzle. We suggest a new explanation for cooperation which avoids restrictions of most previous attempts. Our explanation deals with the role of internalized norms for cooperation...

We study the coevolution of cooperation, preferences, and cooperative signals in an environment where individuals engage in a signaling-extended prisoner's dilemma. We prove the existence of a cooperative equilibrium constituted by a (set of) limit cycle(s) and stabilized by the dynamic...

We study the coevolution of cooperation, preferences, and cooperative signals in an environment where individuals engage in a signaling-extended prisoner's dilemma. We prove the existence of a cooperative equilibrium constituted by a (set of) limit cycle(s) and stabilized by the dynamic...

We study the coexistence of strategies in the indirect reciprocity game where agents have access to second-order information. We fully characterize the evolutionary stable equilibria and analyze their comparative statics with respect to the cost-benefit ratio (CBR). There are indeed only two...

This paper analyzes seasonal effects and their potential drivers in charitable giving. We analyze whether donations differ between the pre-Christmas shopping season and summer. Our experiment aims to minimize confounding factors and controls for donor heterogeneity. We find that prosocial...

This paper tests motivational crowding out in the domain of charitable giving. A novelty is that our experiment isolates alternative explanations for the decline of giving such as strategic considerations of decision makers. Moreover, preference elicitation allows us to focus on the reaction of...

This paper experimentally tests the relation between subjects' competitiveness and bargaining behavior. Bargaining is investigated in a demand-ultimatum game, where the responder can request a share of the pie from the proposer. The results show that highly competitive proposers earn less, since...

We test in a survey the impact of economic preferences on compliance and perception during the Corona pandemic. Results show that economic preferences crucially impact citizens' compliance to policies fighting the crisis. Risk tolerance negatively a↵ects citizens' avoidance of crowds, whereas...

In this paper we study the impact of betrayal aversion on agents' effort provision, when principals have discretion regarding agents' remuneration. We show theoretically that agents who work under a nonbinding bonus contract face a trade off in their effort choice between the likelihood and the...