In nonpoint source pollution problems, the regulator does not observe each polluter’s individual emission, which prevents him from using the conventional policy instruments. Therefore, new instruments have been designed to regulate this type of pollution. In an experiment, we compare the efficiency of some of these instruments: an input-based tax, an ambient tax/subsidy, an ambient tax, and a group fine. We assume that polluters themselves are affected by environmental damages. A control session without any regulation is also carried out in order to study the “status quo” situation. Our experimental data show that the input tax and the ambient tax are very efficient and reliable, and the group fine is fairly efficient and reliable. These instruments improve social welfare with respect to the status quo. On the contrary, the ambient tax/subsidy decreases social welfare with respect to the status quo, and its effect is very unreliable. Copyright Springer 2005ambient tax, ambient tax/subsidy, experimental economics, group fine, input tax, nonpoint source pollution, regulation,
Using a loss-framed variant of the dictator game, we investigate how dictators split a loss between themselves and a recipient. In a loss context, we try to disentangle the effects of a more self-oriented preference from that of a higher social responsibility. We find that in the loss context, individuals offer more, and women offer more than men. This could be attributed to a more responsible response to a powerless recipient in a loss context.
ABSTRACT:In this paper we present results from an economic experiment with 100 co-habiting couples, to investigate behaviour in a prisoner's dilemma played by spouses. We compare defection behaviour within real couples to pairs of strangers. We observe that one out of four participants choose not to cooperate with their spouse. To understand why spouses might prefer defection, we use a novel allocation task to elicit the individual's trade-off between efficiency and equality within a couple. We further investigate the impact of socio-demographic and psychological characteristics of the couples. We find in particular that lack of preferences for joint income maximization; having children and being married lead to higher defection rates in the social dilemma.
Female specialization on household work and male specialization on labor-market work is a widely observed phenomenon across time and countries. This absence of gender neutrality with respect to workdivision is known as the "work-division puzzle". Gender differences regarding characteristics (preferences, productivity) and context (wage rates, social norms) are generally recognized as competing explanations for this fact. We experimentally control for context and productivity to investigate preferences for work-division by true co-habiting couples, in a newly developed specialization task. Efficiency in this task comes at the cost of inequality, giving higher earnings to the "advantaged" player. We compare behavior when men (or women) are in the advantaged position, which corresponds to the traditional (or power) couple case where he (or she) earns more. We show that women do not contribute more than men to the household public good whatever the situation. This result allows us to rule out some of the standard explanations of the work-division puzzle.
We test a repeated principal-agent relationship with hidden actions in the laboratory. At each period, the principal offers payments to the agent in order to induce him to provide the high effort level. The agent can accept or reject the offer; if he accepts it, he can choose the high or the low effort level. We observe that offered payments are higher than predicted by the subgame-perfect equilibrium, and higher in the partners' than in the strangers' design. Furthermore, agents strategically reject inequitable offers in early rounds in order to induce principals to increase payments in the subsequent rounds.
We perform meta-regressions on a single database containing 96 observations of simple ultimatum games and 144 observations of simple dictator games to disentangle the fairness hypothesis based on the degree of economic development of a country. According to the fairness hypothesis, offers in the two games should not differ if they were motivated by a subject's fairness concerns. Using the difference across countries between offers in ultimatum and dictator games, we address the effect of being exposed to the market mechanism on pure fairness concerns and other-regarding, expectations-driven fairness. Our results show in particular that the lower the level of economic development in a country, the less likely the rejection of the fairness hypothesis.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.