Background: Economic risk taking is different from social risk taking. In experimental economics, the former is typically measured through an individual’s willingness to trade off variance for expected value, whereas the latter is typically measured by the trust game (TG) where one individual...

We extend the dual-self model to include altruistic preferences. This explains (1) why people may have preferences for equality in the laboratory but not in the field, (2) why intermediate donations may occur in dictator games, (3) why cognitive load and time pressure may increase giving, and...

We let participants indicate their intended action in a repeated game experiment where actions are implemented with errors. Even though communication is cheap talk, we find that the majority of messages were honest (although the majority of participants lied at least occasionally). As a result,...

Recent evidence suggests that there is genetic basis for economic behaviors, including preferences for risk taking. We correlate variation in risk taking and behavioral biases with two genetic polymorphisms related to the uptake of dopamine and serotonin (7R DRD4 and s/s 5-HTTLPR), hypothesizing...

We explore gender differences in preferences for competition and risk among children aged 9-12 in Colombia and Sweden, two countries differing in gender equality according to macro indices. We include four types of tasks that vary in gender stereotyping when looking at competitiveness: running,...

Costly third party punishment has been interpreted as a tool for studying the enforcement of social norms. Experiments on this topic typically involve a third party observer who can pay to decrease the payoff of a player who has behaved selfishly (or generously) toward another. We investigate...

Individuals differ significantly in their willingness to take risks. Studies on twins suggest that part of the individual variation in risk taking can be explained by genetic differences. I will discuss work by my collaborators and me where we explore how risk-taking behavior varies with...

This paper compares cooperation among Columbian and Swedish children aged 9-12. We illustrate the dynamics of the prisoner's dilemma in a new task that is easily understood by children and performed during a physical education class. We find some evidence that children cooperate more in Sweden...

There is substantial variation in risk taking, with women typically taking less risk than men. In this talk I will go through some relevant studies on this topic, as well as discuss the relationship with stock market participation

Background: Entrepreneurship is crucial to the creation and development of every industry, and considerable work in economics, psychology, management, and other fields of social science has been devoted to analyzing characteristics of these individuals. Twin studies suggest that entrepreneurship...