Research on economic growth suggests that the era of colonization has had an impact on the levels of economic development of countries around the globe. However, why some countries were colonized early, some late, and others not at all, and what effect these differences have had on current...

We use two types of cross-country growth regression models to revisit explanations of slow growth in Africa looking at growth rate variation among African countries only. Both sets of models produce results that are surprising given conclusions based on global sample: within Africa, we .nd...

All since the rise of the first civilizations, economic development has been closely intertwined with the evolution of states. In this paper, we contribute to the literature on state history and long-run economic development in four ways. First, we extend and complete the state history index...

We study the. Incentive effects of endogenous group formation in a voluntary contributon experiment. Subjects are given information on the past contributions of others and allowed to express a preference for partners. On the basis of the stated preferences new groups are formed. We find that the...

We present results from a novel experiment on the effect of a policy designed to encourage cooperation in a prisoner's dilemma game. We find that the effect of this policy on the level of cooperation is greater when it was chosen democratically by the subjects than when it was exogenously...

The prospect of receiving a monetary sanction for free riding has been shown to increase contributions to public goods. We ask whether the impulse to punish is unresponsive to the cost to the punisher, or whether, like other preferences, it interacts with prices to generate a conventional demand...

In a public goods experiment with the opportunity to vote to expel members of a group, we found that contributions rose to nearly 100% of endowments with significantly higher efficiency compared with a noexpulsion baseline. Expulsions were strictly of the lowest contributors, and there was an...

Previous experiments on public goods dilemmas have found that the opportunity to punish leads to higher contributions and reduces the free rider problem; however, a substantial amount of punishment is targeted on high contributors. In the experiment reported here, subjects are given the...

We compare two devices previously found to increase contributions to public goods in laboratory experiments: communication, and punishment (allowing subjects to engage in costly reductions of one another’s earnings after learning of their contribution decisions). We find that communication...

We compare two devices previously found to increase contributions to public goods in laboratory experiments: communication, and punishment (allowing subjects to engage in costly reductions of one another’s earnings after learning of their contribution decisions). We find that communication...