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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 4 of 4
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Endogenous Group Formation Via Unproductive Costs, Jason A. Aimone, Laurence R. Iannaccone, Michael D. Makowsky, Jared Rubin
Endogenous Group Formation Via Unproductive Costs, Jason A. Aimone, Laurence R. Iannaccone, Michael D. Makowsky, Jared Rubin
Economics Faculty Articles and Research
Sacrifice is widely believed to enhance cooperation in churches, communes, gangs, clans, military units, and many other groups. We find that sacrifice can also work in the lab, apart from special ideologies, identities, or interactions. Our subjects play a modified VCM game—one in which they can voluntarily join groups that provide reduced rates of return on private investment. This leads to both endogenous sorting (because free-riders tend to reject the reduced-rate option) and substitution (because reduced private productivity favours increased club involvement). Seemingly unproductive costs thus serve to screen out free-riders, attract conditional cooperators, boost club production, and increase member …
Reflections On Finance And The Good Society, Robert J. Shiller
Reflections On Finance And The Good Society, Robert J. Shiller
Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers
After the financial crisis that began in 2007 many have expressed renewed doubts about the basic goodness of the financial sectors, doubts related to deeply-held moral principles and traditions of larger society. We need to reconcile these doubts with financial practice. We must acknowledge the important principle of reciprocity. We must understand that there are natural human tendencies towards aggression and hoarding, which no financial institutions and codes of ethics can completely eliminate. We must appreciate the important role of professional organizations in moderating these tendencies. When these principles are made part of financial education we can expect better public …
Pompeii And The Vesuvian God, David Randall Jenkins
Pompeii And The Vesuvian God, David Randall Jenkins
David Randall Jenkins
The paper argues the Vesuvian destruction of Herculaneum and Pompeii in 79 AD engendered the formulation of the Anno Domini and the writing of scripture.
Religious Identity And The Provision Of Public Goods: Evidence From The Indian Princely States, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin
Religious Identity And The Provision Of Public Goods: Evidence From The Indian Princely States, Latika Chaudhary, Jared Rubin
ESI Working Papers
Religious identity affects preferences and can consequently affect policy. We propose two mechanisms through which a ruler's religious identity can affect public good provision: i) greater provision of goods in regions where more subjects are the ruler's co-religionists, and ii) lower provision of goods where private markets provide a substitute to the ruler's co-religionists. Empirically, identifying the causal effect of religious identity on policy is often impossible, since the religious identity of rulers rarely changes over time and place. We address this problem by exploiting the variation in the religion of rulers in the Indian Princely States in the early …