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Justice And Fairness In The Dictator Game, Bart Wilson, Karl Schurter
Justice And Fairness In The Dictator Game, Bart Wilson, Karl Schurter
Bart J. Wilson
No abstract provided.
An Experimental Inquiry Into The Social Construction Of Property, Bart Wilson, Vernon Smith
An Experimental Inquiry Into The Social Construction Of Property, Bart Wilson, Vernon Smith
Bart J. Wilson
We design a laboratory experiment to explore whether and how property rights emerge in a specialization and exchange environment where theft is costless. Additional treatments examine various enforcement mechanisms to determine whether private actions can produce agreement to respect property. We find that although an absence of exogenous enforcement does not hamper property’s emergence in all cases, private enforcement instruments tend to worsen outcomes. Property emerges when subjects form groups, understand potential gains from trade, convince group members that all benefit by avoiding theft, and display credible commitment to cooperation in their actions. In other words, as Hume argued in …