We investigate whether upfront investments increase cooperation in settings with no enforcement mechanism, where cooperation is not easily sustained voluntarily. Such investments are a cost that individuals incur before deciding whether to cooperate and increase cooperation payoff. We find that...

Choosing between selfish and non-selfish behavior in real life is a repeated decision with varying time spans between repetitions. To learn more about the dynamics of altruistic behavior, we use repeated standard dictator experiments. The dynamics of prosocial behavior in these experiments...

We analyze the Spence education game in experimental markets. We compare a signaling and a screening variant, and we analyze the effect of increasing the number of employers from two to three. In all treatments, there is a strong tendency to separate. More efficient workers invest more often and...

A growing body of literature in experimental economics examines how cognitive ability affects cooperation in social dilemma settings. We contribute to the existing literature by studying this relationship in a more complex and strategic environment when the number of partners increases in an...

Considerable experimental evidence shows that although costly peer-punishment enhances cooperation in repeated public-good games, heavy punishment in early rounds leads to average period payoffs below the non-cooperative equilibrium benchmark. In an environment where past payoffs determine...

We study the dynamics of the private provision of a public good that requires both capacity buildup and ongoing operating costs. We show that setting a time limit for the collection of contributions dedicated to capacity buildup minimizes the utility loss at the Nash equilibrium. We test the...

How can we maximize the common good? This is a central organizing question of public policy design, across political parties and ideologies. The answer typically involves the provisioning of public goods such as fresh air, national defense, and knowledge. Public goods are costly to produce but...