A scientists at least since the work of Thomas Hobbes (1960 [1651]): How do communities of
individuals sustain agreements that counteract individual temptations to select short-term …

We designed an experiment to study trust and reciprocity in an investment setting. This
design controls for alternative explanations of behavior including repeat game reputation …

Previous literature has demonstrated the important role that trust plays in developing and
maintaining well-functioning societies. However, if we are to learn how to increase levels of …

A lems of cooperation under several labels, including collective action, prisoner's dilemma,
and social dilemma. Much of this work has been experimental. The forms of the games in …

* My exposure to many of these issues began in an endogenous discussion group on
“Power and Politics in Governance Structures” at the Center for Advanced Study in the …

Individuals are often given the responsibility of making decisions on behalf of a group or an
organization. However, little is known about preferences or behavior in such contexts. In an …

Twenty years ago, in a chapter entitled “Ethnocentrism and Its Role in Interpersonal
Trust”(Brewer, 1986), I proposed that one function of ingroup formation and ingroup …

In the trust game first player 1 decides between non-cooperation or trust in reciprocity. Only
in the latter case player 2 chooses between exploiting or rewarding player 1. In our …

Signaling theory is concerned with situations of strategic interdependence in which one
actor (the sender) aims at persuading another actor (the receiver) of a fact the receiver does …

We study the intrapersonal relationship between trust and reciprocity in a laboratory
experiment. Reciprocal subjects trust significantly more than selfish ones. This finding raises …