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Do members of a majority group systematically shift punishment onto innocent members of an ethnic minority? We introduce an experimental paradigm, punishing the scapegoat game, to measure how injustice affecting a member of one's own group shapes punishment of an unrelated bystander. When no harm is done, we find no evidence of discrimination against the ethnic minority (Roma people in Slovakia). In contrast, when a member of one's own group is harmed, the punishment ‘passed’ onto innocent individuals more than doubles when they are from the minority, as compared to when they are from the dominant group.

The reluctance of people to get vaccinated represents a fundamental challenge to containing the spread of deadly infectious diseases1,2, including COVID-19. Identifying misperceptions that can fuel vaccine hesitancy and creating effective communication strategies to overcome them are a global public health priority3–5. Medical doctors are a trusted source of advice about vaccinations6, but media reports may create an inaccurate impression that vaccine controversy is prevalent among doctors, even when a broad consensus exists7,8. Here we show that public misperceptions about the views of doctors on the COVID-19 vaccines are widespread, and correcting them increases vaccine uptake. We implement a survey among 9,650 doctors in the Czech Republic and find that 90% of doctors trust the vaccines. Next, we show that 90% of respondents in a nationally representative sample (n = 2,101) underestimate doctors’ trust; the most common belief is that only 50% of doctors trust the vaccines. Finally, we integrate randomized provision of information about the true views held by doctors into a longitudinal data collection that regularly monitors vaccination status over 9 months. The treatment recalibrates beliefs and leads to a persistent increase in vaccine uptake. The approach demonstrated in this paper shows how the engagement of professional medical associations, with their unparalleled capacity to elicit individual views of doctors on a large scale, can help to create a cheap, scalable intervention that has lasting positive impacts on health behaviour.

We test whether an environment of poverty affects time preferences through purely psychological channels. We measured discount rates among farmers in Uganda who made decisions about when to enjoy entertainment instead of working. To circumvent the role of economic constraints, we experimentally induced thoughts about poverty-related problems, using priming techniques. We find that thinking about poverty increases the preference to consume entertainment early and to delay work. Using monitoring tools similar to eye tracking, a novel feature for this subject pool, we show that this effect is unlikely to be driven by less careful decision-making processes.

This paper provides experimental evidence showing that members of a majority group systematically shift punishment on innocent members of an ethnic minority. We develop a new incentivized task, the Punishing the Scapegoat Game, to measure how injustice affecting a member of one's own group shapes punishment of an unrelated bystander ("a scapegoat"). We manipulate the ethnic identity of the scapegoats and study interactions between the majority group and the Roma minority in Slovakia. We find that when no harm is done, there is no evidence of discrimination against the ethnic minority. In contrast, when a member of one's own group is harmed, the punishment "passed" on innocent individuals more than doubles when they are from the minority, as compared to when they are from the dominant group. These results illuminate how individualized tensions can be transformed into a group conflict, dragging minorities into conflicts in a way that is completely unrelated to their behavior.

This paper provides experimental evidence showing that members of a majority group systematically shift punishment on innocent members of an ethnic minority. We develop a new incentivized task, the Punishing the Scapegoat Game, to measure how injustice affecting a member of one’s own group shapes punishment of an unrelated bystander (“a scapegoat”). We manipulate the ethnic identity of the scapegoats and study interactions between the majority group and the Roma minority in Slovakia. We find that when no harm is done, there is no evidence of discrimination against the ethnic minority. In contrast, when a member of one’s own group is harmed, the punishment ”passed” on innocent individuals more than doubles when they are from the minority, as compared to when they are from the dominant group. These results illuminate how individualized tensions can be transformed into a group conflict, dragging minorities into conflicts in a way that is completely unrelated to their behavior. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Harmful behavior against out-group members often rises during periods of economic hardship and health pandemics. Here, we test the widespread concern that the Covid-19 crisis may fuel hostility against people from other nations. Using a controlled money-burning task, we elicited hostile behavior among a nationally representative sample (n = 2,186) in the Czech Republic during the first wave of the pandemic. We provide evidence that exogenously elevating the salience of the Covid-19 crisis increases hostility against foreigners from the EU, USA and Asia. This behavioral response is similar across various demographic sub-groups. Further, we observe zero to small negative effects for both domestic out-groups and in-groups, suggesting that the salience of Covid-19 might negatively affect behavior not only towards foreigners but to other people more generally, though these findings are not conclusive. The results underscore the importance of not inflaming anti-foreigner sentiments and suggest the need to monitor impacts of the crisis on behavior in the social domain.

Can a short survey instrument reliably measure a range of fundamental economic preferences across diverse settings? We focus on survey questions that systematically predict behavior in incentivized experimental tasks among German university students (Becker et al. 2016) and were implemented among representative samples across the globe (Falk et al. 2018). This paper presents results of an experimental validation conducted among low-income individuals in Nairobi, Kenya. We find that quantitative survey measures -- hypothetical versions of experimental tasks -- of time preference, attitude to risk and altruism are good predictors of choices in incentivized experiments, suggesting these measures are broadly experimentally valid. At the same time, we find that qualitative questions -- self-assessments -- do not correlate with the experimental measures of preferences in the Kenyan sample. Thus, caution is needed before treating self-assessments as proxies of preferences in new contexts.

Aggressive behavior against out-group members often rises during periods of economic hardship and health pandemics. Here, we test the widespread concern that the COVID-19 crisis may fuel hostility against people from other nations or ethnic minorities. Using a controlled money-burning task, we elicited hostile behavior among a nationally representative sample (n=2,186) in the Czech Republic, at a time when the entire population was under lockdown. We provide causal evidence that exogenously elevating salience of the COVID-19 crisis magnifies hostility against foreigners. This behavioral response is similar across various demographic sub-groups. The results underscore the importance of not inflaming anti-foreigner sentiments and suggest that efforts to restore international trade and cooperation will need to address both social and economic damage.

Can a short survey instrument reliably measure a range of fundamental economic preferences across diverse settings? We focus on survey questions that systematically predict behavior in incentivized experimental tasks among German university students (Becker et al. 2016) and were implemented among representative samples across the globe (Falk et al. 2018). This paper presents results of an experimental validation conducted among low-income individuals in Nairobi, Kenya. We find that quantitative survey measures -- hypothetical versions of experimental tasks -- of time preference, attitude to risk and altruism are good predictors of choices in incentivized experiments, suggesting these measures are broadly experimentally valid. At the same time, we find that qualitative questions -- self-assessments -- do not correlate with the experimental measures of preferences in the Kenyan sample. Thus, caution is needed before treating self-assessments as proxies of preferences in new contexts.

Does the experience of war increase people's religiosity? Much evidence supports the idea that particular religious beliefs and ritual forms can galvanize social solidarity and motivate in-group cooperation, thus facilitating a wide range of cooperative behaviours including-but not limited to-peaceful resistance and collective aggression. However, little work has focused on whether violent conflict, in turn, might fuel greater religious participation. Here, we analyse survey data from 1,709 individuals in three post-conflict societies-Uganda, Sierra Leone and Tajikistan. The nature of these conflicts allows us to infer, and statistically verify, that individuals were quasirandomly afflicted with different intensities of war experience-thus potentially providing a natural experiment. We then show that those with greater exposure to these wars were more likely to participate in Christian or Muslim religious groups and rituals, even several years after the conflict. The results are robust to a wide range of control variables and statistical checks and hold even when we compare only individuals from the same communities, ethnic groups and religions.

We study two psychological channels how poverty may increase impatient behavior - an effect on time preference and reduced attention. We measured discount rates among Ugandan farmers who made decisions about when to enjoy entertainment instead of working. We find that experimentally induced thoughts about poverty-related problems increase the preference to consume entertainment early and delay work. The effect is equivalent to a 27 p.p. increase in the intertemporal rate of substitution. Using monitoring tools similar to eye tracking, a novel feature for this subject pool, we show this effect is not due to a lower ability to sustain attention.

This paper provides strong evidence supporting the long-standing speculation that decisionmaking in groups has a dark side, by magnifying the prevalence of anti-social behavior towards outsiders. A large-scale experiment implemented in Slovakia and Uganda (N=2,309) reveals that deciding in a group with randomly assigned peers increases the prevalence of anti-social behavior that reduces everyone’s payoff but which improves the relative position of own group. The effects are driven by the influence of a group context on individual behavior, rather than by group deliberation. The observed patterns are strikingly similar on both continents.

In suggesting that new nations often coalesce in the decades following war, historians have posed an important psychological question: Does the experience of war generate an enduring elevation in people’s egalitarian motivations toward their in-group? We administered social-choice tasks to more than 1,000 children and adults differentially affected by wars in the Republic of Georgia and Sierra Leone. We found that greater exposure to war created a lasting increase in people’s egalitarian motivations toward their in-group, but not their out-groups, during a developmental window starting in middle childhood (around 7 years of age) and ending in early adulthood (around 20 years of age). Outside this window, war had no measurable impact on social motivations in young children and had only muted effects on the motivations of older adults. These “war effects” are broadly consistent with predictions from evolutionary approaches that emphasize the importance of group cooperation in defending against external threats, though they also highlight key areas in need of greater theoretical development.

Researchers have observed that women in developing countries often make more development friendly choices than men. We implemented experimental tasks among a large and diverse sample of married individuals in rural India and found women to make on average more patient and more risk-averse choices than men. We find important heterogeneity in gender differences in patience: there is no difference for spouses with no children but patience levels diverge if there are small children in a family. The findings imply that conflicting spousal preferences are most likely in poor families with children.

Other-regarding preferences are important for establishing and maintaining cooperative outcomes. In this paper, we study how formation of other-regarding preferences during childhood is affected by parental background. Our subjects, aged 4-12 years, are classified into other-regarding types based on simple binary choice dictator games. The main finding is that children of parents with low education are more spiteful, more selfish and less altruistic. This link is robust to controlling for a rich set of child characteristics and class fixed effects. The parental effects stand out against the overall development of preferences, as we find children to become less spiteful and more altruistic with increasing age. Our findings, complemented by an analysis of the World Values Survey data, suggest that low socio-economic status affects parental effort invested in instilling other-regarding preferences into children, making them less likely to acquire cooperative types of preferences.

In the past decade, nearly 20 studies have found a strong, persistent pattern in surveys and behavioral experiments from over 40 countries: individual exposure to war violence tends to increase social cooperation at the local level, including community participation and prosocial behavior. Thus while war has many negative legacies for individuals and societies, it appears to leave a positive legacy in terms of local cooperation and civic engagement. We discuss, synthesize, and reanalyze the emerging body of evidence and weigh alternative explanations. There is some indication that war violence enhances in-group or “parochial” norms and preferences especially, a finding that, if true, suggests that the rising social cohesion we document need not promote broader peace.

Significance We provide experimental evidence on peer effects and show that behavior that harms members of a different ethnic group is twice as contagious as behavior that harms coethnics. The findings may help to explain why ethnic hostilities can spread quickly (even in societies with few visible signs of interethnic hatred) and why many countries have adopted hate crime laws, and illustrate the need to study not only the existence of discrimination, but also the stability of attitudes and behaviors toward outgroup members., Interethnic conflicts often escalate rapidly. Why does the behavior of masses easily change from cooperation to aggression? This paper provides an experimental test of whether ethnic hostility is contagious. Using incentivized tasks, we measured willingness to sacrifice one’s own resources to harm others among adolescents from a region with a history of animosities toward the Roma people, the largest ethnic minority in Europe. To identify the influence of peers, subjects made choices after observing either destructive or peaceful behavior of peers in the same task. We found that susceptibility to follow destructive behavior more than doubled when harm was targeted against Roma rather than against coethnics. When peers were peaceful, subjects did not discriminate. We observed very similar patterns in a norms-elicitation experiment: destructive behavior toward Roma was not generally rated as more socially appropriate than when directed at coethnics, but the ratings were more sensitive to social contexts. The findings may illuminate why ethnic hostilities can spread quickly, even in societies with few visible signs of interethnic hatred.

The aim of this paper is to introduce roots of multi-agent approaches in economic theory. From the beginning, the opinion that economic system should be investigated on the basis of comprehension to its basic units was expressed by many scientists. Friedrich A. Hayek and Herbert A. Simon are two important scientists who may be designated as predecessors of multi-agent modeling. They incorporated similar principles as applied by multi-agent system approaches into their works before it was possible to deal with these principles through artificial intelligence. This paper links ideas of Hayek and Simon with multi-agent modeling, common principles and ideas are identified.

There is hardly any bigger economic tragedy than poor economic development of sub-Saharan Africa. The persistent character of its slow growth or even decline is not possible to explain when using standard growth theories and cross-coutry data. We have suggested a classification framework for existing theories and it allowed us to show that all these approaches (despite their broadness and different policy implications) assume that people's preferences everywhere in the world can be embodied in Homo oeconomicus concept. Growth incompatible behavior is then explained by unfavorable environment being it geography, colonial legacy or bad policy environment. Our aim is to highlight that current concepts omit the possible heterogeneity of people resulting from very poor education level, cultural differences and health conditions. In our view, explanation of African specific behavioral patterns can contribute to deeper understanding, why there is lack of investments and lack of specialization; and why economic growth has been largely missing in sub-Saharan Africa.

High desired fertility is an important factor contributing to the population explosion in sub-Saharan Africa. On a broad sample of 910 respondents from rural areas of Uganda this paper assesses the impact of health risks, economic contributions from children, traditional community institutions and unequal position of women on desired fertility levels. The paper further scrutinizes how these determinants are affected by education. The results show that fear of disease and involvement in traditional clan institutions increase the desired number of children. Interestingly, these effects can be remarkably mitigated through education, which improves individual health prevention as well as reduces the influence of clans. The economic incentives for having children seem to be less significant than other factors. In addition, a very significant difference in desired fertility between men and women emerges; nevertheless, education leads to both reduction and convergence of their desired fertility levels. All these findings suggest that education stimulates a complex change in fertility preferences and underline the importance of education as an efficient tool for reducing rapid population growth.

We link two important ideas: attention is scarce and a lack of information about an individual drives discrimination in selection decisions. We model how knowledge of ethnicity influences allocation of attention to available information about an applicant. When only a small share of applicants is accepted, negative stereotypes are predicted to lower attention, while the effect is opposite when most applicants are accepted. We test for such “attention discrimination” in two field experiments. We send emails responding to job offers and apartment-rental advertisements and monitor information acquisition, a new feature in this type of experiment. We vary the names of applicants to signal ethnicity and find that minority names are about half as likely to receive an invitation for an apartment viewing or a job interview. The novel finding is that minority names affect the likelihood of resumes being read on the labor market as well as an applicant’s personal website being inspected on the housing market, but the effects are opposite across the two markets. These results support the model's assumption of endogenous attention, which magnifies the role of prior beliefs in discrimination. The model implies persistence of discrimination in selection decisions, even if information about individuals is available and there are no differences in preferences, lower returns to employment qualifications for negatively stereotyped groups, and for policy, the important role of the timing of when a group attribute is revealed.

Other-regarding preferences are central for the ability to solve collective action problems and thus for society’s welfare. We study how the formation of other-regarding preferences during childhood is related to parental background. Using binary-choice dictator games to classify subjects into other-regarding types, we find that children of less educated parents are less altruistic and more spiteful. This link is robust to controlling for a range of child, family, and peer characteristics, and is attenuated for smarter children. The results suggest that less educated parents are either less efficient to instill social norms or their children less able to acquire them.

This paper studies gender heterogeneity in preferences. We used experimental methods to elicit the subjective discount rate and attitude toward risk in Indian villages. Results show that women made more patient choices than men and that their discount rate is related to number of children. No gender difference is found for individuals without children. Women’s discount rate declines up to four children, whereas men’s does not decline. Our findings suggest that conflictual interactions within a household are more likely when a couple has young children, and hence, spousal heterogeneity in patience is at its greatest.

This paper draws a link between self-control problems and the contractual mechanisms of microcredit. We use a series of “lab experiments in the field” which were designed to elicit measures of time discounting on a sample of 573 individuals in rural Karnataka, India. Evidence from the experiments were integrated with individual survey data on the economic and financial lives of villagers. One third of participants made choices consistent with hyperbolic preferences (more impatient now than in the future), and would be made better off if they could discipline their time inconsistent preferences. While hyperbolic preferences have been often associated with saving behavior, we describe links to borrowing as well. We find that “hyperbolic” women save a lower share of their savings at home and save less in total levels. Women with hyperbolic preferences are also more likely to borrow--and to do so through microcredit institutions specifically. The finding highlights the role of the fixed and frequent installment schedule ubiquitous in microcredit contracts. While microcredit contracts are celebrated for mitigating informational asymmetries, the evidence suggests that they also offer helpful structure for people with self-discipline problems who seek to accumulate capital but who lack suitable contractual saving devices.

Endogenous time discounting is introduced in a two-period human-capital-driven growth model: subjective discount rate depends upon the level of human capital. This assumption accords strongly with the micro-level evidence. In the model an individual optimizes consumption over two periods. Low human capital societies do not grow fast since high discount rate discourages schooling as the major form of savings. This implication is further reinforced by modeling the efficiency of schooling in the context of population pressure which is also driven by low human capital. The model may produce multiple development regimes and it illustrates wider role of education in tackling possible development traps.

The authors find that as they seek to develop a social model both appropriate to their needs and consistent with EU standards, Eastern European countries must understand that a single European Social Model does not exist. Recently, some Eastern European unionists have begun to support their demands with reference to the European Social Model, which they only comprehend, however, in terms of its most inefficient Continental form. Eastern European countries must engage in a deeper public discussion of the pros and cons of various diverse social models, while taking into account the effects of different social models on the past and future competitiveness of the countries that have adopted them. Let those models compete to open opportunities based on forward-looking approach with full respect to the minimum harmonized standards (such as social safety net etc.) instead of fixing the past.

The paper aims to contribute to the understanding of why there is a lack of domestic saving and investment in rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa. It focuses on heterogeneity in inter-temporal preferences as a possible explanation of this important puzzle. The study is based on a unique experimental data set collected from 856 respondents in Ugandan villages and scrutinizes how individual patience – measured by the discount rate – is formed. The results suggest that Ugandan respondents are substantially less patient than their counterparts in similar experimental studies undertaken in developed countries and South Asia. We find a strong negative association between the level of education and the individual discount rate. Furthermore, we took advantage of the Ugandan education reform in 1996 and varying school frequency to demonstrate the causal relationship stemming from education to patience. The estimates suggest that an additional year at school decreases the discount rate on average by 35 percentage points after controlling for other characteristics (age, income group, sex, marital status and clan linkage). Our findings strongly accord with patience understood as a non-cognitive ability which needs to be taught by parents, learnt at school and promoted by social norms. The Ugandan responses, therefore, propose a new way in which education may influence development in sub-Saharan Africa – by shaping individual patience.

There is hardly any bigger economic tragedy than poor economic development of sub-Saharan Africa. The persistent character of its slow growth or even decline is not possible to explain when using standard growth theories and cross-coutry data. We have suggested a classification framework for existing theories and it allowed us to show that all these approaches (despite their broadness and different policy implications) assume that people’s preferences everywhere in the world can be embodied in Homo oeconomicus concept. Growth incompatible behavior is then explained by unfavorable environment being it geography, colonial legacy or bad policy environment. Our aim is to highlight that current concepts omit the possible heterogeneity of people resulting from culture, very poor education level and health conditions. In our view, explanation of African specific behavioral patterns can contribute to deeper understanding, why there is lack of investments and lack of specialization; and thus why there is no growth in sub-Saharan Africa.

The aim of this paper is to introduce roots of multi-agent approaches in economic theory. From the beginning, the opinion that economic system should be investigated on the basis of comprehension to its basic units was expressed by many scientists. Friedrich A. Hayek and Herbert A. Simon are two important scientists who may be designated as predecessors of multi-agent modeling. They incorporated similar principles as applied by multi-agent system approaches into their works before it was possible to deal with these principles through artificial intelligence. This paper links ideas of Hayek and Simon with multi-agent modeling, common principles and ideas are identified.

High desired fertility is an important factor contributing to the population explosion in sub-Saharan Africa. On a broad sample of 910 respondents from the rural areas of Uganda this paper assesses the impact of health risks, economic contributions from children, traditional community institutions and unequal position of women on desired fertility levels. The paper further scrutinizes how these determinants are affected by education. The results show that fear of diseases and involvement in traditional clan institutions increase desired number of children. Interestingly, these effects can be remarkably mitigated through education that improves the individual health prevention as well as reduces the influence of clans. Economic incentives for having children seem to be less significant than other factors. In addition, a very significant difference in desired fertility between men and women emerges, nevertheless education leads both to reduction and convergence of their desired fertility levels. All these findings suggest that education stimulates a complex change in fertility preferences and underline the importance of education as efficient tool for reducing rapid population growth.

One of the employer's problems in his relationship to the employee is limited enforceability of work-quality. There are two types of instruments: the employer has at hand while motivating employees for higher efficiency - higher wage as a carrot and monitoring as a stick. These two instruments can be mutually substitutable. The more costly the supervision is, the more convenient for the employer is to substitute it by the wage increase. The key determinant for wage level of individual employee is not only the labour productivity, which is usually considered, but the degree of monitoring costs as well. The above mentioned approach allows us to explain the existence of above-equilibrium wage level in the environment of rational behaviour. We are not dealing with a market failure, the employers maximize their profits. As a consequence there is involuntary unemployment on the labour market persisting in the long-run.

Heterogeneity in time discounting may reinforce the existing barriers to save and invest faced by rural populations in developing countries. We elicit a subjective discount rate for a varied sample of Ugandan villagers. In accordance with other studies, we have found the discount rate to decrease with education. We examine this correlation further by testing the causal effect of education and exploit two different sources of its variation: school frequency across villages and the number of the respondents’ school‐going years that overlap with the era of the dictator Idi Amin’s rule. For men, we find that education has a significant impact on their discount rate, similar in magnitude for both types of instruments and robust to observable characteristics. This finding highlights the importance of education in development.