Sickness Absence and Local Benefit Cultures In many countries, sickness absence financed by generous insurance benefits has become an important concern in the policy debate. It turns out that there are strong variations in absence behavior between local geographical areas, and it has been difficult to explain these variations by observable socioeconomic factors. In this paper we investigate whe...

We conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate the impact of institutions and institutional choice on truth-telling and trust in sender-receiver games. We find that in an institution with sanctioning opportunities, receivers sanction predominantly after having trusted lies. Individuals who sanction are responsible for truth-telling beyond standard equilibrium predictions and are more likely ...

We consider the implications of ethical behaviour on the effect of a redistributive tax-transfer system. In choosing their labour supplies, individuals take into account whether their tax liabilities correspond to what they view as ethically acceptable. If tax liabilities are viewed as ethically acceptable, a taxpayer behaves ethically, does not distort her behaviour, and chooses to work as if ...

This paper explores the evolution of a simple traffic convention concerning the side of the road on which to drive. This agent-based simulation probes some of the deeper conceptual issues involved in the evolution of conventions, particularly the nature of rational decision-making and its possible reliance upon habit. The simulations show that the systemic convergence to a left/right convention...

Incentives and Prosocial Behavior We develop a theory of prosocial behavior that combines heterogeneity in individual altruism and greed with concerns for social reputation or self-respect. Rewards or punishments (whether material or image-related) create doubt about the true motive for which good deeds are performed and this “overjustification effect” can induce a partial or even net crowding ...

A longstanding tradition of patrilocal marriage – living with the parents-in-law affects every generation of Central Asian women and their choices regarding childbearing, employment and education. While anthropological evidence suggests that elder matriarchs (Queen Bees) play a key and often detrimental role in the lives of the junior women in their households, rigorous empirical studies are sc...

In this essay we review the association between the importance of family ties in a society and a series of economic indicators. We then examine in details the importance of the family in influencing educational choices in Italy, a country with very strong family ties. The results indicate that family background is crucial in determining the choice of high school in Italy. It is the choice of hi...

Peers, Neighborhoods and Immigrant Student Achievement: Evidence from a Placement Policy Immigrants typically perform worse than other students in the OECD countries. We examine to what extent this is due to the population characteristics of the neighborhoods that immigrants grow up in. We address this issue using a governmental refugee placement policy which provides exogenous variation in the...

The Role of Social Networks in Cultural Assimilation* We develop a model where, in the first stage, minority individuals have to decide whether or not they want to assimilate to the majority culture while, in the second stage, all individuals (both from the majority and the minority group) embedded in a network have to decide how much effort they exert in some activity (say education). We show ...

The purpose of this paper is to explore the evolution of bargaining norms in a simple team production problem with two sided relationship specific investments and competition. The puzzle we wish to address is why efficient bargaining norms do not evolve even though there exist efficient sequential equilibria? Conditions under which stochastically stable bargaining conventions exist are characte...