03/09/2010 The Journal of Socio-Economics

Due paper realizzati grazie agli esperimenti svolti presso il LES (Laboratorio di Economia Sperimentale di Forlì) e al finanziamento di AICCON sono stati pubblicati su importanti riviste scientifiche.

Si tratta del working paper “Let’s meet up! The role of relational goods in promoting cooperation” di Leonardo Becchetti (Università di Roma Tor Vergata), Giacomo Degli Antoni (Università di Milano - Bicocca ed EconomEtica)) e Marco Faillo (Università di Trento) pubblicato su The Journal of Socio-Economics.

Ab s t r a c t
The present paper draws on data collected through a Traveler’sDilemmaexperiment where the possibility of consuming relational goods is introduced by allowing (or forcing) agents to meet after the experiment. It enriches the literature on social distance by comparing the effect of its reduction when it is a voluntary subject’s choice and when it is compulsory. We show that the existing interpretations of the effect of social distance reduction cannot explain the differences in agents’ behavior across our experimental treatments. This allows us to give to the theory of social distance an original interpretation based on the concept of relational goods where the possibility to consume relational goods promotes non-selfish behavior.

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L’altro contributo è “The sources of happiness: Evidence from the investment game” di Leonardo Becchetti (Università di Roma Tor Vergata) e Giacomo Degli Antoni (Università di Milano - Bicocca ed EconomEtica)) pubblicato sul Journal of Economic Psychology.

A b s t r a c t
The paper draws on data collected in an investment game plus a questionnaire to investigate whether happiness is affected by the circumstances and/or outcomes of the game and to evaluate what motivations or preference structures (self-interested preferences, inequity aversion, altruism, warm glow, social-welfare preferences, trust or reciprocity) may explain that effect. Our results show that the amount given by trustors to trustees has a significant and positive effect on the former’s self-declared happiness. To explain why only trustors and not trustees are significantly and positively affected by their giving decision, we argue that the happiness effect results from the trustor’s internal satisfaction with his/her exhibition of trust or by a consequence of it, that is, the enactment of the ‘‘generating” (total payoff enhancing) power of the trustor’s decision. The second interpretation hinges on characteristics of the investment game in which the trustor has a value-creating power while the trustee only has a redistributive power.

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