There are many assignment processes in which agents are given the opportunity to unilaterally select a match. Resulting allocations can be inefficient if agents do not internalize the consequences of their choice on others. To test this formally, we study how other-regarding behaviour vary across two decision contexts: when subjects make a pure allocation decision; and when they select a partne...

We study how other-regarding behaviour vary across two decision contexts: when subjects make a pure allocation decision; and when they pick a partner. In both settings each subject’s decision is final, as in a dictator game; and it affects their payoff and that of other subjects in the same way under both settings. We find that that subjects are less likely to sacrifice their own material wellb...

The initially high performance of a socioeconomic organization is quite often subject to gradual erosion over time. We present a simple model which captures such a phenomenon. We assume that players are partly motivated by certain psychological factors, norms and morale, and they are willing to exert extra effort if others do so. This results in a ”continuum” of equilibrium effort levels, whose...

We provide a framework to decompose preferences into a notion of distributive justice and a selfi shness part and to recover individual notions of distributive justice from data collected in appropriately designed experiments. “Dictator games” with varying transfer rates used in Andreoni and Miller (2002) and Fisman et al. (2007) can be used to assess individuals’ preferences, but – with the he...

This paper argues that a generalized model of social preferences must simultaneously pass two tests; the Variety Test (explain outcomes under variety, the V-test) and the Psychological Test (conform to psychological intuition, the P-test). It is shown that none of the models proposed to date unconditionally passes these tests. The paper extends the Fehr and Schmidt model of inequality-aversion ...

We propose a simple mechanism that implements the Ordinal Shapley Value (PérezCastrillo and Wettstein [2005]) for economies with three or less agents. JEL Classification numbers: C72, D50, D63.

Do natural disasters increase charitable giving or simply reallocate a fixed supply of donations? We study this question using Internal Revenue Service data in the context deadly tornadoes. find that among zip codes located same state but more than 20 miles away from tornado’s path, donations by households about $2 million per tornado fatality. no negative effects fatalities on to charities the...

Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, we ...rst document that the recent increase in income inequality in the United States has not been accompanied by a corresponding rise in consumption inequality. Much of this divergence is due to di¤erent trends in within-group inequality, which has increased signi...cantly for income but little for consumption. We then develop a simple framework...

In a convincing analysis of the conditions and strength of altruism, Bester and Güth [Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 34, 1998, 193-209] unfortunately restrict the interpretation of their results. Their paper provides us with an analysis of the conditions and strength of malevolence (or envy) as well. ©2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. JEL classification: A13; C7...

This paper surveys the literature on group selection. I describe the early contributions and the group selection controversy. I also describe the main approaches to group selection in the recent literature; …xation, assortative group formation, and reproductive externalities. Keywords: Altruism; spite; externalities; conformity; …xation; signalling JEL Classi…cation: C70; D03; D62; D64