Are people Samaritans or Avengers?

This paper refers on an experiment comparing the propensity to punish unfair behavior with the desire to help the victims of unfairness, in presence of a budget constraint and without the expectation of a long-run pecuniary gain. The possibility that subjects' behavior changes when the initial endowment is earned instead of being randomly assigned is considered.Endowment

Transfers and Altruistic Punishments in Solomon's Game experiments

Our research is a variant of the third party punishment game that we call Solomon's Game. The main feature of this game is that players can not only punish unfair people but also help those individuals who are the victims of that unfairness. The aim of this experiment is to compare the human tendency to punish unfair behavior to the desire to help victims of that unfairness, in presence of a budget constraint and without the expectation of a long-run pecuniary gain.

Laffer curve in a non-Leviathan scenario: a real - effort experiment

The aim of this paper is to look for the presence of the Laffer curve in a non-Leviathan state using tax rates of 30%, 50% and 70%. We gave the players the opportunity to choose their labour supply both under a Welfare – State scenario and a State – of – Nature contract. The main evidence is that a tax rate of 70% is extremely unpopular and significantly decreases subjects' labour supply without any benefit on the tax revenue. On the other hand, an increase of the tax rate from 30% to 50% does not reduce the per capita labour supply while increasing the tax revenue.Laffer

Non-self-centered inequity aversion matters. A model.

The model by Fehr and Schmidt introduces envy and altruism in the utility function of a representative agent. The aim of this paper is to provide two extensions - non linearity and non self-centredness - to this model. This extension turns out to be more consistent with experimental evidence than the original model.

An Extension to the Model of Inequity Aversion by Fehr and Schmidt

The aim of this paper is to improve on the model by Fehr and Schmidt (1999) by developing a non-linear model (that leads to interior rather than corner solutions) and by taking into account that different levels of income imply different reactions of fair-minded people. We suggest to modify the inequity-aversion utility function proposed by Fehr and Schmidt by taking into account not only the difference between players' payoffs, but also their absolute value. This allows for a non-linear utility function where different stakes lead to different unique optimal interior solutions.

Cooperation without Punishment

Our experiment is made by three treatments. The first one reproduces the classical public good game. The second environment represents a perfect competition market where the contribution of a representative player to the private good gives a positive rent if and only if it is not lower than the highest contribution of the other players in the group. In the third treatment we consider a winner-take-all market where we have only a winner per group. The aim is to test whether the level of cooperation is minimum under the hypothesis of perfect competition.

Third-party Punishment is more effective on Women: Experimental Evidence

Existing experimental studies mainly focus on motivations and choices of thirdparty punishers, but only few of them detect sanction efficacy contradictory results. Our paper wants to shed light on this point. In particular, we want to detect whether the threat of being punished for unfair actions is credible and affects subjects’ choices thus, making it rational to behave fairly. To disentangle the effect of expected punishment on behaviour, we implement in the lab two experimental games - the standard Dictator Game, that is used as baseline, and the Third-Party Punishment Game that incorporates a third player who observes and may punish the Dictator. The idea is that, if the Dictator in treatment TPP believes punishment is a credible threat, s/he may decide to change her/his behaviour, that is, to behave generously in order to avoid sanctions. We find a clear gender bias: women reacted to the punishment threat by increasing their transfer to the Recipient, while men did exactly the opposite.

Compliance by Believing: An Experimental Exploration on Social Norms and Impartial Agreements

The main contribution of this paper is twofold. First of all, it focuses on the decisional process that leads to the creation of a social norm. Secondly, it analyses the mechanisms through which subjects conform their behaviour to the norm. In particular, our aim is to study the role and the nature of Normative and Empirical Expectations and their influence on people's decisions. The tool is the Exclusion Game, a sort of 'triple mini-dictator game'. It represents a situation where 3 subjects - players A - have to decide how to allocate a sum S among themselves and a fourth subject - player B - who has no decisional power. The experiment consists of three treatments. In the Baseline Treatment participants are randomly distributed in groups of four players and play the Exclusion Game. In the Agreement Treatment in each group participants are invited to vote for a specific non-binding allocation rule before playing the Exclusion Game. In the Outsider Treatment, after the voting procedure and before playing the Exclusion Game, a player A for each group (the outsider) is reassigned to a different group and instructed about the rule chosen by the new group. In all the treatments, at the end of the game and before players are informed about the decisions taken during the Exclusion Game by the other co-players, first order and second order expectations (both normative and empirical) are elicited through a brief questionnaire. The first result we obtained is that subjects' choices are in line with their empirical (not normative) expectations. The second result is that even a non-binding agreement induces convergence of empirical expectations - and, consequently, of choices. The third results is that expectation of conformity is higher in the partner protocol. This implies that a single outsider breaks the 'trust and cooperation' equilibrium.fairness, social norms, beliefs, psychological games, experimental games

L'altruismo: atteggiamento irrazionale, strategia vincente o amore per il prossimo?

La teoria dell'Homo Oeconomicus ha fornito una visione formalizzata dell'uomo che, dominato da una natura tendenzialmente egoista, agisce principalmente nel suo interesse. Questa immagine dell'uomo non e' pero' sempre in linea con l'evidenza empirica. Il contributo proveniente da studi condotti nel campo della sociobiologia e della psicologia ha permesso di superare in parte i limiti della teoria economica classica permettendo di delineare un modello di uomo meno rigoroso, ma al tempo stesso piu' completo. La conclusione e' che la natura dell'uomo non e' univoca, come allo stesso modo non lo sono le conseguenze delle sue azioni. L'obiettivo di questo lavoro e' proprio quello di ripercorrere le principali tappe che hanno visto modificarsi l'immagine che l'economia ha dell'uomo e della sua natura, a partire dall'Homo Oeconomicus fino ad arrivare al piu' moderno Homo Oeconomicus Maturus il cui comportamento e' determinato non solo dalle leggi di mercato, ma anche dai propri impulsi emotivi.

fairness: a survey

In this paper I provide an excursus, as complete as I could, of the most important theoretical and experimental works concerning fairness. The aim is twofold. First of all, I want to underline the importance of the role played by experimental economics in testing and improving models on this topic. Secondly, I want to mention some evidence that, even for fair-minded people, economic factors such as competition and costs, still matter in their decisional process.