Work in progress

Abstract: Future generations have no agency in today’s decisions, making their well-being a defining challenge of our time. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion all depend on trade-offs between immediate gains and long-term sustainability. These dilemmas are often attributed to shortsightedness. We show instead that the critical obstacle lies within generations themselves: coordination failures among contemporaries can undermine sustainability even when individuals care about the future. Using a lab-in-the-field intergenerational goods game with a threshold-based regeneration rule, we compare settings with a single decision maker per generation to ones with three contemporaries deciding simultaneously without communication. When individuals act alone, resources are almost always preserved; when contemporaries must coordinate, conservation collapses. Our models explain this pattern by combining intergenerational altruism with beliefs about others’ restraint: pessimistic expectations erode altruistic motives, driving overextraction. These insights have direct implications for climate governance and natural resource management, where failures in coordination today can be as detrimental as lack of concern for the future

Abstract: Future generations have no agency in today’s decisions, making their well-being a defining challenge of our time. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion all depend on trade-offs between immediate gains and long-term sustainability. These dilemmas are often attributed to shortsightedness. We show instead that the critical obstacle lies within generations themselves: coordination failures among contemporaries can undermine sustainability even when individuals care about the future. Using a lab-in-the-field intergenerational goods game with a threshold-based regeneration rule, we compare settings with a single decision maker per generation to ones with three contemporaries deciding simultaneously without communication. When individuals act alone, resources are almost always preserved; when contemporaries must coordinate, conservation collapses. Our models explain this pattern by combining intergenerational altruism with beliefs about others’ restraint: pessimistic expectations erode altruistic motives, driving overextraction. These insights have direct implications for climate governance and natural resource management, where failures in coordination today can be as detrimental as lack of concern for the future

Abstract: We use laboratory and lab-in-the-field experiments to evaluate policy interventions aimed at curbing the overexploitation of groundwater in southern Tunisia. A framed field experiment, based on a dynamic common-pool resource (CPR) model with both static and dynamic externalities, captures the increasing costs of extraction due to current and past overuse. Treatments were designed in collaboration with local stakeholders, reflecting real-world constraints such as weak enforcement and limited resources. We test two governance tools---Stakeholder Communication and Expert Advice---against a laissez-faire control, with and without a payoff simulator. Results show that Expert Advice is the most effective at reducing extraction, especially in the field setting, underscoring the value of credible, external guidance in CPR management.

Abstract: We study experimentally two variants of the beauty contest game (BCG+ and BCG-, thereafter) with an interior equilibrium. Subjects choose an integer number between 1 and 100. The winner is the one whose chosen number is closest to 2/3×(mean+30) in BCG+ or 100-2/3×mean in BCG-. For both games, the unique equilibrium, assuming IEWDS, is 60. The key difference between the two elimination processes is alternation. Under positive feedback elimination occurs only on one side of the equilibrium point, either the upper side or the lower side, depending at which extremity of the interval the reasoning process is initiated. In contrast, under negative feedback, elimination alternates on both sides of the equilibrium point, whatever the extremity that is chosen as the starting point. We use eye-tracking to identify whether subjects rely on one-sided elimination under BCG+ and two-sided elimination with alternation under BCG-.

Abstract: We assess the impact of signed environmental externalities on individual portfolio decisions in a lab-in-the-field experiment on finance professionals and students. Participants are prone to accept lower returns for positive environmental impact but will not bear increased risk. They show asymmetric pro-environmental preferences depending on the sign of the externality. Finance professionals are more pro-environment than students, particularly regarding positive externalities, and less influenced by a ranking signal about environmental performance. Control tasks show that experimental measures of pro-social and environmental preferences are significant predictors for students, while actual market practices for professionals explain a significant part of professionals portfolio composition.

This paper investigates the effect of an additive unfair background risk on the optimal donation behavior of a purely altruistic decision-maker in

the dictator game. Assuming both the dictator and the recipient face this background risk, and that the dictator is risk-vulnerable, we find that the

presence of background risk reduces the deviation of the optimal donation from an equal split. This outcome holds whether the dictator’s fairness

is evaluated ex-ante or ex-post, offering new insights into the implications of risk vulnerability.

Abstract: We study theoretically and experimentally the approval mechanism (Masuda et al., 2013, 2014) in the case of a three-player voluntary contribution game with the minimum disapproval benchmark. The three-player game raises the issue of aggregating approval votes. We compare the unanimity and the majority approval rules. Backward elimination of weakly dominated strategies predicts null contributions under the majority rule and any contribution vector under the unanimity rule. The experimental results show that the approval mechanism is less efficient in three-player than in two-player voluntary contribution games. Furthermore, the unanimity rule is more effective at increasing contributions than the majority rule. Overall, our results suggest that the efficiency of the AM is mitigated in the case of three-player public goods games.

Abstract: We examine how living under chronic and acute environmental risks influences risk

preferences and social behavior. Our lab-in-the-field experiment was conducted near preferences and social behavior was conducted near

Mount Semeru in East Java, Indonesia, comparing villagers in high-risk zones exposed to volcanic eruptions and lahars with residents from nearby lower-risk areas. During the data collection period, a major eruption in December 2021 provided a natural experiment to study behavioral responses to both background risk and an acute disaster realization. Participants engaged in incentivized economic games measuring risk attitudes, altruism, trust, reciprocity, and cooperation, complemented by survey data. We find that chronic exposure to environmental risk increases risk aversion but has no significant effect on social preferences. In contrast, the eruption significantly boosted prosocial behaviors across multiple domains, though its effect on risk attitudes became negligible once social preferences were accounted for. Our results highlight the complex and differentiated ways in which long-term exposure and salient shocks shape individual decision-making under risk.