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A long-standing discussion in economics asks whether institutions affect people's social predispositions. The current experiment tests whether different aspects of markets affect people's social preferences. The results are that people are less socially minded in more anonymous settings. Additionally, market competition erodes social preferences through two mechanisms. First, market competition encourages opportunistic behavior, and second, the market institution itself decreases the other-regardingness of the participants.

We analyse pricing, effort and tipping decisions in the online service Google Answers. While users set a price for the answer to their question ex ante, they can additionally give a tip to the researcher ex post. In line with the related experimental literature we find evidence that tipping is motivated by reciprocity, but also by reputation concerns among frequent users. Moreover, researchers seem to adjust their eþort based on the user.s previous tipping behaviour. An efficient sorting takes place when enough tip history is available. Users known for tipping in the past receive higher effort answers, while users with an established reputation for non-tipping tend to get low effort answers. In addition, we analyse how tipping is adopted when the behavioural default is not to tip and estimate minimum levels for the fraction of genuine reciprocator and imitator types.

Bargaining results emerge from the interplay of strategic options and social preferences. For every bargaining game, however, the advantage of a player having certain preferences in terms of negotiated equilibrium revenues might differ. We explore the hypothesis that preferences change according to the players' strength combination. Simple 1×1 bargaining experiments from the literature are discussed, and 2×2 as well as 2×3 assignment market experiments with possible renegotiations are investigated. The assumption that players adopt preferences for two to five roles, defined by strength combinations of the two bargainers, explains the experimental results better than individually constant preferences.

Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable allocations that would be unattainable by incentives that appeal solely to self-interest. But experimental and other evidence indicates that conventional economic incentives and social preferences may be either complements or substitutes, explicit incentives crowding in or crowding out social preferences. We investigate the design of optimal incentives to contribute to a public good under these conditions. We identify cases in which a sophisticated planner cognizant of these non-additive effects would make either more or less use of explicit incentives, by comparison to a naive planner who assumes they are absent.

Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable allocations that would be unattainable by incentives that appeal solely to self-interest. But experimental and other evidence indicates that conventional economic incentives and social preferences may be either complements or substitutes, explicit incentives crowding in or crowding out social preferences. We investigate the design of optimal incentives to contribute to a public good under these conditions. We identify cases in which a sophisticated planner cognizant of these non-additive effects would make either more or less use of explicit incentives, by comparison to a naive planner who assumes they are absent.