Someone wise once pointed out that the best noise a scientist can make is not “Eureka!” but rather “Hmmm… that’s odd”. On Monday Feb 20, we had two talks from two excellent guest speakers that both showed some intriguing results.

The option to impose monetary punishments on freeriders has been shown to increase cooperation in a public goods game. Steve Tucker, our visiting scholar, unpacked this effect into a monetary cost component and a signalling-of-disapproval component.

Then Mauro Papi presented results of ongoing experiments that induce participants to search among lotteries either by alternative or by attribute. In a third condition, participants see both alternatives and full information on their attributes simultaneously.

I don’t wish to scoop the work of our guests by revealing the punchlines. I’ll just recommend that you keep an eye out for their working papers and publications on these and related topics.