We report the results of an experimental study that compares voting mechanisms in the provision of public goods. Subjects can freely decide how much they want to contribute. Whether the public good is ¯nally provided is decided by a referendum under full information about all contributions. If...

We analyse two team settings in which one member in a team has stronger incentives to contribute than the others. If contributions constitute a sacrifice for the strong player, the other team members are more inclined to cooperate than if contributions are strictly dominant for the strong player.

Under a great variety of legally relevant circumstances, people have to decide whether or not to cooperate, when they face an incentive to defect. The law sometimes provides people with sanctioning mechanisms to enforce pro-social behavior. Experimental evidence on voluntary public good...

Laboratory experiments by Fudenberg and Pathak (2010), and Vyrastekova, Funaki and Takeuch (2008) show that punishment is able to sustain cooperation in groups even when it is observed only in the end of the interaction sequence. Our results demonstrate that the real power of unobserved...

We report the results of an experimental study that compares voting mechanismsin the provision of public goods. Subjects can freely decide how much they want tocontribute. Whether the public good is finally provided is decided by a referendumunder full information about all contributions. If...