Essays on Behavioral and Experimental Economics – Cooperation, Emotions and Health

Abstract

This thesis consists of four self-contained papers that explore issues in human behavior and their implications for policy design. The main method used in all four papers consists of lab experiments, a method that facilitates both variation in key institutional features to allow causal inference and analysis of sharp theoretical predictions in a clean environment. The first two papers investigate how to increase voluntary contributions to public goods, such as local environmental quality. In particular, the effect of imposing a minimum contribution level, which can be exemplified by some minimum level of environmentally friendly action, is investigated with different methodological focuses. The third paper focuses on the influence of emotions on behavior by exploring the strategic consequences of frustration and anger in human interaction, and the fourth and final paper investigates the altruistic behavior of physicians and whether this behavior is affected by payment system and uncertainty in health outcome.