Abstract
Research questions, results and Empirical Data This book studies the allocation of scarce resources among competing needs and wants. Chapter 1 Luck, effort and Redistribution on procedural justice provides one possible explanation for the vast differences between US and Western European tax an redistribution levels. Chapter 2- Participation and Peers in Social Dilemmas on social norms investigates two potential reasons why solutions to social dilemmas in for instance insurance systems can persist without being destroyed by the negative forces of free-riding. Chapter 3 - Commitment and Impasses in Negotiation on conflict shifts focus to bilateral bargaining and the reasons for conflict and impasses. Whether they manifest as strikes, job resignations, or trade embargoes, failures of the negotiation process create tremendous loss of social welfare and are therefore important to further understand. Each chapter is based on observations of real human behavior in the lab. The empirical data consists of: 204 M.B.A. students and 96 M.Sc. students from Harvard university, the Stockholm School of Economics, the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm university and Karolinska Institutet; 5 experiments over 21 experimental sessions generated 2,520 observations.