This paper considers the effect of status or relative income on work effort, combining experimental evidence from a gift-exchange game with the analysis of multi-country ISSP survey data. We find a consistent negative effect of others’ incomes on individual effort in both datasets. The individual’s rank in the income distribution is a stronger determinant of effort than is others’ average incom...

This paper was prepared as a background paper for the panel on “Global Capitalism and Sustainable Development” in the International Conference on Global Ethos to be held at the United Nations University in Tokyo, Japan, in October 2000. It surveys the major issues involved in defining sustainability, and the relationship thereof to development and the behaviour of capitalist economies. A partic...

Most professional economists believe that economists in general are more selfish than other people and that this increased selfishness is due to economics education. This article offers empirical evidence against this widely held belief. Using a unique data set about giving behavior in connection with two social funds at the University of Zurich, it is shown that economics education does not ma...

Volunteer work is an increasingly large, yet ill-understood sector of the economy. We show that monetary rewards undermine the intrinsic motivation of volunteers. A unique data set from Switzerland allows us to assess the effects of financial rewards on the effort put into volunteer work. There is a fairly standard pattern regarding the volunteers reaction e.g. to more labor market work hours. ...

The paper discusses rationality at two levels. According to a common opinion the key to rationality at the group level is a willingness to contribute unselfishly at the individual level. I claim that even when rationality at the individual level is denied, it is often achieved by social punishment. The difficulty to organize a social project is exaggerated. The relative ease of implementing ind...