Increasing inequality is commonly associated with social unrest and conflict between social classes. This paper reports the results of a laboratory experiment to study the implications of rising inequality on the tendency to burn others' income. The experiment considers an environment where...

While social relationships play an important role for individuals to cope with missing market institutions, they also limit individuals' range of trading partners. This paper aims at understanding the determinants of trust at various social distances when information asymmetries are present....

While social relationships play an important role for individuals to cope with missing market institutions, they also limit individuals' range of trading partners. This paper aims at understanding the determinants of trust at various social distances when information asymmetries are present....

This paper studies the effect of introducing costly partner selection for the voluntary contribution to a public good. Subjects participate in six sequences of five rounds of a twoperson public good game in partner design. At the end of each sequence, subjects can select a new partner out of six...

We present an experiment in which extrinsic information (signals) may generate sunspot equilibria. The underlying coordination game has a unique symmetric non-sunspot equilibrium, which is also risk-dominant. Other equilibria can be ordered according to risk dominance. We introduce salient but...

We show that perceptions of relative rank in the wealth distribution shape individuals’ willingness to take risks. Using a representative large-scale survey, we manipulate perceptions of relative standing by randomly varying response categories when asking respondents about their wealth level....