Abundant evidence suggests that high levels of contributions to public goods can be sustained through self-governed monitoring and sanctions. This experimental study investigates the effectiveness of decentralized sanctioning institutions where punishment opportunities are restricted to agents...

In a repeated public goods setting, we explore whether individuals, acting unilaterally, will provide an effective sanctioning institution. Subjects first choose unilaterally whether they will participate in a sanctioning stage that follows a contribution stage. Only those who gave themselves...

This paper examines how third-party surveillance influences preferences over distributional outcomes. In addition, we examine what motivates people to invest economic resources to monitor decision-making processes. Our results show that a large majority of individuals is willing to pay for a...

We investigate the effects of the availability of resources that can be expended in conflict on conflict intensity. We run a between-subjects Tullock contest in which we vary the contest budget from Low to Medium to High, while keeping the Nash equilibrium bid the same. We find an 'inverted...

We investigate the effects of Partner and Stranger matching in contest experiments and find no difference in the level or distribution of bids across matching protocols. However, demographic and individual strategy effects are different with different matching. Hence, unless one is interested in...

We examine the sensitivity of the dictator game to information provided to subjects. We investigate if individuals internalize completely irrelevant information about players when making allocation decisions. Subjects are provided with their score and the scores of recipients on a quiz prior to...