People contribute more to public goods, the more others give (“crowding-in”). We investigate two possible causes of crowding-in: reciprocity, the usual explanation, and conformism, a neglected alternative. The issue is important since conformism has more scope to bring about endogenous...

Since homo sapiens is a social animal, one might expect human nature the set of psychological propensities with which our species is naturally endowed to equip human beings to live in social groups. In this chapter, we consider the implications of this idea for economics and game theory. We...

People contribute more to experimental public goods the more others contribute, a tendency called "crowding-in." We propose a novel experimental design to distinguish two possible causes of crowding-in: reciprocity, the usual explanation, and conformity, a neglected alternative. Subjects are...