Social Preferences in Experimental Economics

Social Preferences in Experimental Economics

Social Preferences and Public Economics: Mechanism design when social preferences depend on incentives

Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable allocations that would be unattainable by incentives that appeal solely to self-interest. But experimental and other evidence indicates that conventional economic incentives and social preferences may be either comple...

Social Preferences or Collusion? Experimental Evidence

We study relative performance schemes in light of social preferences. To the extent players are other regarding, they internalize the negative externality they impose on other players by exerting lower e¤ort. Thus, players with other regarding preferences are more likely to initiate and sustain collusive behavior, as traditionally de…ned. We …nd this is indeed the case experimentally. We also …...

Social Preferences under Risk - An Experimental Analysis

The literature on social preferences provides overwhelming evidence of departures from pure self-interest of individuals. Experiments show that people care about others’ well-being and their relative standing. This paper investigates whether this type of behavior persists when risk comes into play. I devise an experiment which sheds light on the interrelation of risk and social preferences by m...

Finance education and social preferences: Experimental evidence

What impact does a finance education have on the social preferences and the resulting behaviors of individuals? Experiments of a free riding game are conductedwhere awealthcreating investment decision is made. The contribution benefits the group, but the incentives are such that an individual, lacking social preferences, would rather make no contribution and free ride off others. It is shown th...