If experimental subjects arbitrage against market interest rates when making intertemporal allocations of cash, the data will reveal nothing about subjects' discount rates, only uncovering subjects' market interest rates. If they frame choices narrowly, market rates will not be salient and the...

We report experimental results for a twice-played prisoners' dilemma in which the players can choose the allocation of the stakes across the two periods. Our point of departure is the assumption that some (but not all) people are principled to "do the right thing," or cooperate, as long as their...

Eliciting time preferences has become an important component of both laboratory and field experiments, yet there is no consensus as how to best measure discounting. We examine the predictive validity of two recent, simple, easily administered, and individually successful elicitation tools:...

There is convincing experimental evidence that Expected Utility fails, but when does it fail, how severely, and for what fraction of subjects? We explore these questions using a novel measure we call the uncertainty equivalent. We find Expected Utility performs well away from certainty, but...

This paper compares two methods to encourage socially optimal provision of a public good. We compare the efficacy of vigilante justice, as represented by peer-to-peer punishment, to delegated policing, as represented by the "hired gun" mechanism, to deter free riding and improve group welfare....

We present and experimentally test a mechanism that provides a simple, natural, low cost, and realistic solution to the problem of compliance with socially determined efficient actions, such as contributing to a public good. We note that small self-governing organizations often place enforcement...

Experimentally elicited discount rates are frequently higher than what one would infer from market interest rates and seem unreasonable for economic decision-making. Such high rates have often been attributed to present bias and hyperbolic discounting. A commonly recognized bias of standard...

Evidence suggests that some pollutants follow an inverse-U-shaped pattern relative to countries' incomes. This relationship has been called the out a simple and straight-forward static model of the microfoundations of the pollution-income relationship. We show that the environmental Kuznets...

We study an observable risk-return tradeoff for which risk "preferences" are normatively prescribed by the desire to win the game. The choice is whether to shoot a 2-pointer or a 3-pointer in professional (NBA) basketball. When trailing, teams should get more risk-loving as they fall further...