In a novel experimental design with nearly 10,000 adults and children, we study how adults in two societies characterized by very different levels of income inequality, Shanghai (China) and Norway, make real distributive choices involving children. We document a large cross-societal difference...

There is a striking difference in income inequality and redistributive policies between the United States and Scandinavia. To study whether there is a corresponding cross-country difference in social preferences, we conducted the first large-scale international social preference experiment, with...

We report the results of a randomized controlled trial testing whether incentivizing physical exercise improves the academic performance of college students. As expected, the intervention increases physical activity. The main result is that it generates a strong and significant improvement in...

The paper reports the first experimental study on people's fairness views on extreme income inequalities arising from winner-take-all reward structures. We find that the majority of participants consider extreme income inequality generated in winner-take-all situations as fair, independent of...

The paper reports the first experimental study on people's fairness views on extreme Income inequalities arising from winner-take-all reward structures. We find that the majority of participants consider extreme income inequality generated in winner-take-all situations as fair, independent of...

There are striking differences in inequality and redistribution between the United States and Scandinavia. To study whether there are corresponding differences in social preferences, we conducted a large-scale international social preference experiment where Americans and Norwegians make...

The large experimental literature on competitiveness has typically ignored a key feature of many competitive settings in society: competition is not always fair. The playing field may be uneven and competitors of unequal strength. In our experiment, we systematically vary the fairness of the...

The debate between Engelmann and Strobel (2004, 2006) and Fehr, Naef, and Schmidt (2006) highlights the important question of the extent to which lab experiments on student populations can serve to identify the motivational forces present in society at large. We address this question by...