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on Evolutionary Economics |
| By: | Alois Stutzer; Lorenz Goette; Michael Zehnder |
| Abstract: | In this paper, we propose a decision framework where people are individually asked to either actively consent or dissent to some pro-social behavior. We hypothesize that confronting individuals with the choice of engaging in a specific pro-social behavior contributes to the formation of issue-specific altruistic preferences while simultaneously involving a commitment. The hypothesis is tested in a large-scale field experiment on blood donation. We find that this "active-decision" intervention substantially increases the stated willingness to donate blood, as well as the actual donation behavior of people who have not fully formed preferences beforehand. |
| Keywords: | active decision, pro-social behavior, field experiment, blood donation |
| JEL: | C93 D64 I18 |
| Date: | 2006–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:zur:iewwpx:279&r=evo |
| By: | Saint-Paul, Gilles |
| Abstract: | This paper derives the conditions under which fitness-reducing alleles can survive in a long-run stationary equilibrium for a trading population, extending the results in Saint-Paul (2002) for arbitrary systems of sexual reproduction. |
| Keywords: | comparative advantage; gene-culture co-evolution; genotypes; trade |
| JEL: | J1 J22 |
| Date: | 2006–04 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:5613&r=evo |
| By: | Ernesto Reuben; Frans van Winden |
| Abstract: | This experimental study investigates how behavior changes after punishment for an unkind action. It also studies how fairness perceptions affect the reaction to punishment and whether this effect is consistent across repeated play and role experiences. A repeated version of the power-to-take game is used. In this game, the proposer can make a claim on the resources of a responder. Then, the responder can destroy any part of her own resources. The focus is on how proposers adjust their behavior depending on their fairness perceptions, their experienced emotions, and their interaction with responders. We find that fairness plays an important role in the behavior of proposers. Specifically, deviations from a perceived fairness norm trigger feelings of shame and guilt, which induce proposers to lower their claims. However, we also find that the perceived fairness norm varies considerably between individuals. Therefore, it is not the case that proposers who considered they were acting fairly were particularly nice to responders. Our results also show that the different types of individuals predicted by models of social preferences, can be traced among the subjects that played the same role in both periods, but fail to describe the behavior of subjects who switched from one role to the other. |
| JEL: | C90 Z13 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1685&r=evo |
| By: | Ernesto Reuben; Frans van Winden |
| Abstract: | This is an experimental study of a three-player power-to-take game where a take authority is matched with two responders. The game consists of two stages. In the first stage, the take authority decides how much of the endowment of each responder that is left after the second stage will be transferred to the take authority (the so-called take rate). In the second stage, each responder can react by destroying any part of his or her own endowment. Two treatments are considered: one in which all players are ‘strangers’ to each other (random matching), and one in which the responders know each other from outside the lab and are more or less close ‘friends’ (whereas the take-authority is again randomly selected). We focus on how the intensity of ties between responders impacts the decisions, beliefs, and emotions of both the responders and the take-authority. Some of our findings are: (1) although take rates are about the same, friends destroy more than strangers when faced with high take rates; (2) coordination on the same destruction level is stronger among friends; (3) the high level of coordination among friends can be explained by their emotional reaction towards one another; (4) the difference between the actual and expected take rate is a much better predictor of experienced emotions and destruction than the difference between the actual and (what is considered as) the fair take rate. |
| Keywords: | reciprocity, social ties, emotions, expectations, experiment, friends, principal-agent relationship, appropriation, fairness |
| JEL: | A10 C72 C91 C92 H20 Z13 |
| Date: | 2006 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ces:ceswps:_1674&r=evo |