Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus—
determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other …

Explicit economic incentives designed to increase contributions to public goods and to
promote other pro-social behavior sometimes are counterproductive or less effective than …

Public opinion and politics are strongly influenced by economic theory and economic policy
advice. Most of the underlying economic reasoning is based on the assumptions of a …

Along with incentive schemes, another well-established way to align the interests of
principals and agents and, consequently, to reduce and eliminate biases and errors is the …

Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold
ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable …

The assumption that decision makers choose actions to maximize their preferences is a
central tenet in economics, often justified formally or informally by appealing to evolutionary …

This paper develops a general methodology for characterizing the dynamic evolution of
preferences in a wide class of strategic interactions. We give simple conditions …

Imagine that you have newly taken charge of a local government, say as mayor of a large
city, and you must confront a range of social, environmental, and health problems. Rates of …

We propose and develop a dynamic theory of endogenous preference formation in which
people adopt worldviews that shape their judgments about their experiences. The …

This paper studies the welfare implications of different institutions certifying environmental
quality supplied by a monopoly. The monopolist can voluntarily certify the quality of the …