Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected pro-sociality among individuals? After the onset of the pandemic, many charitable appeals were updated to include a reference to COVID-19. Did donors increase their giving in response to such changes? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a...

Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected pro-sociality among individuals? After the onset of the pandemic, many charitable appeals were updated to include a reference to COVID-19. Did donors increase their giving in response to such changes? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a...

How does delay in the realization of a prosocial decision affect prosocial choice? This paper first provides a meta-analysis that collects existing evidence on the temporal consistency of prosocial behavior. I show that the evidence on the delay effect on prosocial choice is contradicting but...

In the COVID-19 pandemic, traditional offline charity events and fundraising campaigns are suspended to slow down the transmission of the highly infectious disease. Therefore, online donation platforms and donation-based crowdfunding platforms play an important role in raising charity funds to...

We investigate the consistency of prosocial behaviors in response to changes in the in- stitutional setting of a lab-in-the-field experiment involving primary school students in El Salvador. Students play variants of the dictator game allowing the option to take and with relative unequal initial...

Why does human cooperation often unravel in economic experiments despite a promising start? Previous studies have interpreted the decline as the reaction of disappointed cooperators retaliating in response to lesser cooperators (conditional cooperation). This interpretation has been considered...

Does exposure to refugees affect natives' prosocial behavior? If so, do changes in prosocial behavior also extend to existing migrants? We administer a survey of a representative sample of Lebanese respondents and measure their prosocial behavior toward Syrian refugees, Palestinian migrants, and...

We characterize the relationships between intelligence and prosocial behaviors by using administrative data on cognitive ability, charitable giving, voting, and possession of eco-friendly cars for 1.2 million Swedish men, and a sample of women (~3,000). We find strong positive associations with...

Alongside negative feedback loops between violence and development, several studies find a positive and significant effect of exposure to warfare onto prosocial behavior. This increase in prosociality tends to favor the group the individual identifies with relative to the out-group. The current...

We investigate the consistency of prosocial behaviors in response to changes in the institutional setting of a lab-in-the-field experiment involving primary school students in El Salvador. Students play variants of the dictator game allowing the option to take and with relative unequal initial...

Very little is known about the efficient collection of fines despite their indispensable contribution to local government budgets. This paper fills an important gap in the literature by studying the effectiveness of deterrence (enforcement) and non-deterrence (social norms) letters that aim to...

This paper develops a test for discrimination in lending combining denial rates and recovery rates. In contrast to the recent outcome-test methodology scrutinizing biases in the credit market with differential profits, our approach is applicable to (simple and intersectional) discrimination...

People behave differently when they are being observed due to reputational concerns. Previous studies have found that pro-social behaviour was encouraged when experimental subjects were being observed or believed they were being observed. The present study extends previous research by adding a...

When individuals decide whether or not to lie, they compare the monetary benefits with the psychological cost of violating their norms. In addition, they are more likely to lie when their lies benefit others. This paper compares the impact of the aversion to lying and prosociality on cheating. I...

We experimentally study how (un)selfish lies are reciprocated—or not—in subsequent economic interactions in a labor market. The experiment was conducted in two sequential stages, where the first stage was a deception game, and the second stage was a gift-exchange game. We find that while...

We propose and axiomatize a decision model of social preferences under risk that captures motivated reasoning in social assessments. Our model considers a setup with a decision maker (DM) and one other individual. It highlights how the presence of risk enables the DM to egoistically exploit the...

We experimentally examine how the incentive to defect in a social dilemma affects conditional cooperation. In our first study we conduct online experiments in which subjects play eight Sequential Prisoner's Dilemma games with payoffs systematically varied across games. We find that few second...

Does social recognition motivate prosocial individuals? We run large-scale experiments among members of Italy's main blood donors association, testing social recognition both through social media and peer groups. We experimentally disentangle visibility concerns and peer comparisons, and we...

We experimentally examine how the incentive to defect in a social dilemma affects conditional cooperation. In our first study we conduct online experiments in which subjects play eight Sequential Prisoner's Dilemma games with payoffs systematically varied across games. We find that few second...

We experimentally examine how the incentive to defect in a social dilemma affects conditional cooperation. In our first study we conduct online experiments in which subjects play eight Sequential Prisoner's Dilemma games with payoffs systematically varied across games. We find that few second...

Social learning often occurs between groups with different levels of experience. Yet little is known about the ideal behavioral rules in such contexts. Existing insights only apply when individuals learn from each other in the same group. In this paper, we close this gap and consider two groups,...

We study the effect of repeated opportunities to behave pro-socially on aggregate pro-social behavior in two laboratory experiments and in field data on charitable giving. In the first experiment we show that two consecutive pro-social decisions (implemented as donations to a charity) lead to...

Do crises make people more prosocial? And what role does communication play in promoting such attitudes and behavior? These answers matter for post-crisis economic recovery as social capital has been linked to growth. We leverage the incidence of COVID-19 --a multifaceted global crisis-- and...

Online social networks have the potential to encourage behaviors that improve the health and well-being of society at an unprecedented scale. We examine the impact of Facebook’s blood donation tool on voluntary blood donation in three large countries. Quasi-experimental evidence in the United...

Despite extensive literature on peer effects, the role of peers on personality skill development remains poorly understood. We fill this gap by investigating the effects of having disadvantaged primary school peers, generated by random classroom assignment and parental migration for employment....

Around the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned daily live upside down since social distancing is probably the most effective means of containing the virus until herd immunity is reached. Social norms have been shown to be an important determinant of social distancing behaviors. By conducting...

There is a strong suggestion from the existing literature that volunteering improves the wellbeing of those who give up their time to help others, but much of it is correlational and not causal. In this paper, we estimate the wellbeing benefits from volunteering for England's National Health...

Reporting private information is a key part of economic decision making. A recent literature has found that many people have a preference for honest reporting, contrary to usual economic assumptions. In this paper, we investigate whether preferences for honesty are malleable and what determines...

Reporting private information is a key part of economic decision making. A recent literature has found that many people have a preference for honest reporting, contrary to usual economic assumptions. In this paper, we investigate whether preferences for honesty are malleable and what determines...

Despite extensive literature on peer effects, the role of peers on personality skill development remains poorly understood. We fill this gap by investigating the effects of having disadvantaged primary school peers, generated by random classroom assignment and parental migration for employment....