Christmas is when people are expected to act selflessly for the well-being of others, but are people actually more altruistic at this time of the year? Responding to this question poses a challenge because of the confounding factors of charitable tax breaks, reciprocity motives, direct social...

Based on the assumption that social distance and time are dimensions of psychological distance important for altruistic choices it was predicted that enhancement of altruism due to delaying rewards when choosing between a reward for oneself and for another person would be more pronounced the...

We develop and test a theory of voting and turnout decisions that integrates self-interest, social preferences, and expressive motives. Our model implies that if pocketbook benefits are relevant, voters either perceive their impact on the outcome to be non-negligible, or expressive motivations...

We develop and test a theory of voting and turnout decisions that integrates self-interest, social preferences, and expressive motives. Our model implies that if pocketbook benefits are relevant, voters either perceive their impact on the outcome to be non-negligible, or expressive motivations...

In Japan's hometown tax donation system, people can donate to municipalities where they are not resident and in return receive reciprocal gifts from the local governments of those municipalities. A large part of the donated amount can be deducted from their income and residence taxes. This study...

We study the relationship between workers' opportunities to help others on-the-job and volunteering behavior outside the workplace. We predict that there is substitutability between workers' contribution to other peoples' well-being by exerting effort on-the-job and outside the workplace. We...

We refine the understanding of individual preferences across social lotteries, whereby the payoffs of a pair of subjects are exposed to random shocks. We find that aggregate behavior is ex-post and ex-ante inequality averse, but also that there is a wide variety of individual preferences and...

In this paper, we investigate the link between intra-household resource allocation and familial ties between household members. We show that, within the same geographic, economic and social environments, households where members have "stronger" familial ties (e.g. a nuclear family household)...

Based on a Salop model with regulated prices, we investigate quality provision behavior of competing hospitals before and after a merger. For this, we use a controlled laboratory experiment where subjects decide on the level of treatment quality as head of a hospital. We find that the...

This paper examines the reflexive interplay between individual decisions and social forces to analyze the evolution of cooperation in the presence of "multi-directedness," whereby people's preferences depend on their psychological motives. People have access to multiple, discrete motives....

We report two information cascade game experiments that directly test the impact of altruism on observational learning. Participants interact in two parallel sequences, the observed and the unobserved sequence. Only the actions of the observed entail informational benefits to subsequent...

In this paper, we conduct a theoretical analysis of why individuals provide care and attention to their elderly parents using a two-period overlapping generations model with endogenous saving and a "contest success function" and test this model using micro data from a Japanese household survey,...

In this paper, we attempt to shed light on whether Japanese households are rational or if their behavior is influenced by culture and social norms by examining their saving and bequest behavior. To summarize our main findings, we find that Japan's household saving rate showed great volatility,...

This paper examines the equilibrium effects of alternative financial aid policies intended to promote college participation. We build an overlapping generations life-cycle, heterogeneous-agent, incomplete-markets model with education, labor supply, and consumption/saving decisions. Driven by...

This paper examines the reflexive interplay between individual decisions and social forces to analyze the evolution of cooperation in the presence of "multi-directedness," whereby people's preferences depend on their psychological motives. People have access to multiple, discrete motives....

This paper examines the reflexive interplay between individual decisions and social forces to analyze the evolution of cooperation in the presence of "multi-directedness", whereby people's preferences depend on their psychological motives. People have access to multiple, discrete motives....

We analyze reciprocal behavior when moral wiggle room exists. Dana et al. (2007) show that giving in a dictator game is only partly due to distributional preferences as the giving rate drops when situational excuses for selfish behavior are provided. Our binary trust game closely follows their...

Evidence of gender differences in cooperation in social dilemmas is inconclusive. This paper experimentally elicits unconditional contributions, a contribution vector (cooperative preferences), and beliefs about the level of others' contributions in variants of the public goods game. We show...

This study provides insights on the role of early childhood family environment within the process of preference formation. We start by presenting evidence showing that breastfeeding duration is a valid measure of the quality of early childhood environment. In the main analysis, we then...

The future effects of climate change may induce increased intergenerational altruism. But will increased intergenerational altruism reduce the threat of climate change? In this chapter we investigate this question. In a second-best setting with insufficient control of greenhouse gas emissions in...

Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht das Fairnessverhalten von Studierenden unter-schiedlicher Studienrichtung. Hierzu wurden 289 Studierende der Ernst-Abbe-Hochschule Jena vor zwei verschiedene Entscheidungssituationen gestellt. In diesem Befragungsexperiment mussten die Studierenden wählen, wie...

Dieser Beitrag argumentiert, dass Märkte eine Solidaritätsleistung erbringen, indem sie mittels Preismechanismus individuelles Verhalten so kanalisieren, dass Menschen in Not wirksam geholfen wird. Sie erweisen sich damit als funktionales Äquivalent für Fernstenliebe, also für den – auf...

Are the probable future negative effects of climate change an argument for decreasing the discount rate to promote the interests of future generations? The analysis of the present paper suggests that such stronger intergenerational altruism might undermine future wellbeing if not complemented by...

By now there is substantial experimental evidence that people make use of "moral wiggle room" (Dana et al., 2007), that is, they tend to exploit moral excuses for selfish behavior. However, this evidence is limited to dictator games. In our experiment, a trust game variant, we study whether...

Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) was a UK government cash transfer paid directly to children aged 16-18, in the first two years of post-compulsory full-time education. This paper uses the labour supply effect of EMA to infer the magnitude of the transfer response made by the parent, and so...

We show that socio-economic status (SES) is a powerful predictor of many facets of a child's personality. The facets of personality we investigate encompass time preferences, risk preferences, and altruism, as well as crystallized and fluid IQ. We measure a family's SES by the mother's and...

We show that socio-economic status (SES) is a powerful predictor of many facets of a child's personality. The facets of personality we investigate encompass time preferences, risk preferences, and altruism, as well as crystallized and fluid IQ. We measure a family's SES by the mother's and...

Mixed payment systems have become a prominent alternative to paying physicians through fee-for-service and capitation. While theory shows mixed payment systems to be superior, empirically, causal effects on physicians’ behavior are not well understood when introducing mixed systems. We...

We study the role of self-interest and social preferences in referenda. Our analysis is based on collective purchasing decisions of university students on deep-discount flat rate tickets for public transportation and culture. Individual usage data allows quantifying monetary benefits associated...