We study a dynamic common pool resource game in which current resource stock depends on resource extraction in the previous period. Our model shows that for a sufficiently high regrowth rate, there is no commons dilemma: the resource will be preserved indefinitely in equilibrium. Lower growth...

Punishment is understood to be necessary to the creation and maintenance of social norms. We argue that it can be driven by resentment that arises when norms are violated. Using a model of endogenous norms, we show how to define a norm-violation on any game or choice set and how to predict which...

Recent models of prosociality suggest that cooperation in laboratory games may be better understood as resulting from concern for social norms than from prosocial preferences over outcomes. Underlying this interpretation is the idea that people exhibit heterogeneous respect for shared norms. We...

Theories of norm-dependent utility assume commonly known injunctive norms that rank feasible outcomes by their normative valence, but as yet normative valences have only been measured experimentally. We provide a theoretical foundation that assigns a normative valence to each outcome based on...

We propose a framework for modeling the influence of normative considerations on decision-making and social interaction. Our key insight is that axiomatic models like those used in cooperative game theory can be reinterpreted as theories of moral reasoning and norm formation which describe the...

The rise in polarization in American politics over recent decades has attracted plenty of interest both in academia and in the broader public discussion. However, the connection between affective polarization and individuals’ election expectations is virtually unexplored and poorly understood....

We study experimentally how individuals learn from observing the choices of others in a non-stationary stochastic environment. The imitation choices of participants with low score in an intelligence test are driven solely by the value of imitation. High intelligence score participants, in...