An economic interpretation of Epictetus's precept of 'Taking away aversion from all things not in our power' consists of extending the do- main of indifference beyond its boundaries under non-ethical preferences, so as to yield indifference between outcomes differing only on things out- side...

Pledges feature in international climate cooperation since the 2015 Paris Agreement. We explore how differences in pledgers' trustworthiness affect outcomes in a social dilemma that parallels climate change. In an online experiment, two participants interact with a randomly matched third player...

Descriptive norms - the behavior of other individuals in one's reference group - play a key role in shaping individual decisions. When characterizing the behavior of others, a standard approach in the literature is to focus on average behavior. In this paper, we argue both theoretically and...

Exploiting a natural experiment and an innovative survey design, we study the social and political legacies of armed conflict exposure (ACE) among Turkish conscripts. Our empirical framework identifies the causal impact and isolates the mediating pathways for the average male randomly picked...

Performance ranks introduce a trade-off for workers. They have to choose between signaling high productivity or signaling social compatibility to peers. Using a long-term experiment at a sweater factory, this paper disentangles the incentives underlying performance ranks. Treated workers receive...

Experimental studies show that the Nash equilibrium and its refinements are poor predictors of behavior in non-cooperative strategic games. Cooperation models, such as ERC and inequality aversion, yield superior predictions compared to the standard game theory predictions. However, those models...

We investigate in a laboratory setting whether revealing information on the intelligence of both players affects behavior in repeated games. We study the Prisoners' Dilemma (PD) and Battle of Sexes (BoS) as they cover a large set of the interesting scenarios generated by repeated games of two...

We aim to understand the role and evolution of beliefs in the indefinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma (IRPD). To do so, we elicit beliefs about the supergame strategies chosen by others. We find that heterogeneity in beliefs and changes in beliefs with experience are central to understanding...

Peer observation can influence social norm perceptions as well as behavior in various moral domains, but is the tendency to be influenced by and conform with peers domain-general? In an online experiment (N = 815), we studied peer effects in honesty and cooperation and tested the...

Peer observation can influence social norm perceptions as well as behavior in various moral domains, but is the tendency to be influenced by and conform with peers domain-general? In an online experiment (N = 815), we studied peer effects in honesty and cooperation and tested the...

Dieser Artikel dokumentiert die Besprechung des von Ulrich Blum verfassten Buches „Wirtschaftskrieg – Rivalität ökonomisch zu Ende denken“, das 2020 bei SpringerGabler in Wiesbaden erschienen ist.

This paper examines the hypothesis that cooperation depends on the aspirations that individuals hold for their community welfare and tests whether videos that depict either a successful example of collective action or living conditions in rural areas can shape community aspirations and increase...

Experimental social scientists working at research-intensive institutions deal inevitably with subjects who have most likely participated in previous experiments. It is an important methodological question to know whether participants that have acquired a high level of lab-sophistication show...

This paper investigates how the possibility of affecting group composition combined with the possibility of repeated interaction impacts cooperation within groups and surplus distribution. We developed and tested experimentally a Surplus Allocation Game where cooperation of four agents is needed...

International cooperation on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, disarmament, or free trade needs to be negotiated. The success of such negotiations depends on how they are designed. In the context of international climate change policy, it has been proposed [e.g., Weitzman J of the...

We investigate whether revealing the identities in a public good game that includes a donation incentive leads to higher contributions to the public good. Previous evidence suggests that contributions to a public good increase significantly when these take place in public. Also, the amount of...

We investigate in a laboratory setting whether revealing information on intelligence affects behavior in games with repeated interactions. In our experimental design we communicate information on the cognitive ability of both players. We use three stage games: Prisoners' Dilemma (PD) and two...

Understanding the roots of human cooperation among strangers is of great importance for solving pressing social dilemmas and maintening public goods in human societies. We study the development of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine...

Peer punishment is widely lauded as a decentralized solution to the problem of social cooperation. However, experimental evidence of its effectiveness primarily stems from public good structures. This paper explores peer punishment in another structural setting: a system of generalized exchange....

Understanding the roots of human cooperation among strangers is of great importance for solving pressing social dilemmas and maintening public goods in human societies. We study the development of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine...

We use large-scale survey data of German speaking villages from the 1930's to investigate drivers of cooperation, gender, and religious norms. Through geographic cluster analysis, we show that inter-regional variation explains only little heterogeneity in norms. Villages in the same physical and...

The observability of partners' past play is known to theoretically improve cooperation in an infinitely repeated prisoner's dilemma game under random matching. This paper presents evidence from an incentivized experiment that reputational information per se may not improve cooperation. A...

This paper investigates the importance of concerns about intentions and outcomes in a sequential prisoner’s dilemma game with nature. In the game, there is a chance that the first mover’s choice is reversed. This allows the separation of intended actions from the resulting outcomes....

Human cooperation, occurring without reciprocation and between unrelated individuals in large populations, represents an evolutionary puzzle. One potential explanation is that cooperative behaviour may be transmitted between individuals via social learning. Using an online social dilemma...

Cooperation is widely recognized to be fundamental for the well-balanced development of human societies. Several different approaches have been proposed to explain the emergence of cooperation in populations of individuals playing the Prisoner’s Dilemma game, characterized by two concurrent...

Experiments using the public goods game have repeatedly shown that in cooperative social environments, punishment makes cooperation flourish, and withholding punishment makes cooperation collapse. In less cooperative social environments, where antisocial punishment has been detected, punishment...

We study the development of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine pre-registered hypotheses about which of three fundamental pillars of human cooperation – direct and indirect reciprocity, and third-party punishment – emerges earliest...

We use an experiment to test the hypothesis that groups consisting of like-minded cooperators are able to cooperate irrespective of punishment and therefore have a lower demand for a costly punishment institution than groups of like-minded free riders, who are unable to cooperate without...

We stand now at a turning point, wherein many roads sprawl out in front of us. With unprecedented access to information, the atlas seems to lie within our hands. But, at this crossroads, the popularizers of these many paths shout over one another to persuade new travelers, only to find that most...

Climate challenge can be modelled as a multiplayer prisoner's dilemma where any ecological action - i.e., purchasing an electric car or adopting sustainable life styles - is a costly action in terms of economic resources, time, and effort for individuals. According to the well-known embedded...

An economic interpretation of Epictetus's precept of 'Taking away aversion from all things not in our power' consists of extending the do- main of indifference beyond its boundaries under non-ethical preferences, so as to yield indifference between outcomes differing only on things out- side...

We explore the long run determinants of current differences in the degree of cooperative labor relations at local level. We do this by estimating the causal effect of the medieval communes -that were established in certain cities in Centre-Northern Italy towards the end of the 11th century- and...

We explore the long run determinants of current differences in the degree of cooperative labor relations at local level. We do this by estimating the causal effect of the medieval communes -that were established in certain cities in Centre-Northern Italy towards the end of the 11th century- and...

Public good games in coalitional form, such as the ones depicting international environmental agreements for the reduction of a global pollutant, generally foresee scarce levels of cooperation. The incentive to free ride, that increases for higher levels of cooperation, prevents the formation of...

Public good games in coalitional form, such as the ones depicting international environmental agreements for the reduction of a global pollutant, generally foresee scarce levels of cooperation. The incentive to free ride, that increases for higher levels of cooperation, prevents the formation of...

Our research aims to analyze Brazil's role in the international investment regime and to assess the effects of the Agreement on Cooperation and Investments Facilitation (ACIF) on Brazilian investments in Angola and Mozambique. In this second Discussion Paper, we discuss the relations between...