A number of outstanding puzzles in economics may be resolved by recognizing that where members of a group benefit from mutual adherence to a social norm, agents may obey the norm and punish its violators, even when this behavior cannot be motivated by self-regarding, outcome-oriented...

A reduction of impediments to international flows of goods, capital and professional labor is thought to raise the economic costs of programs by the nation state (and labor unions) to redistribute income to the poor and to provide economic security. But some of the more politically and...

Policies and explicit private incentives designed for self-regarding individuals sometimes are less effective or even counterproductive when they diminish altruism, ethical norms and other social preferences. Evidence from 51 experimental studies indicates that this crowding out effect is...

We address two seemingly unrelated empirical anomalies: the remarkable historical persistence of cultural and institutional differences affecting production and distribution even among nations and regions engaged in extensive trading, and the shortcomings of the standard model that predicts...

We present empirical measures of wealth inequality and its intergenerational transmission among four horticulturalist populations. Wealth is construed broadly as embodied somatic and neural capital, including body size, fertility and cultural knowledge, material capital such as land and...

A reduction of impediments to international flows of goods, capital and professional labor is thought to raise the economic costs of programs by the nation state (and labor unions) to redistribute income to the poor and to provide economic security. But some of the more politically and...

We explore the contribution of reciprocity and other non selfish motives to the political viability of the modern welfare state. In the advanced economies, a substantial fraction of total income is regularly transferred from the better off to the less well off, with the approval of the...

We explore the contribution of reciprocity and other non selfish motives to the political viability of the modern welfare state. In the advanced economies, a substantial fraction of total income is regularly transferred from the better off to the less well off, with the approval of the...