Achievement

We investigate one of the most fundamental questions in economics, i.e., how to incorporate group structure in individual preferences. We present a laboratory experiment that measures the effects of induced group identity on participant social preferences. We find that participants are more altruistic towards an ingroup match. As a result, ingroup matching generates significantly higher expected earnings than outgroup matching. This paper combines experimental methods in economics and social psychology, and provides an empirical foundation for theoretical models of group identity. (Chen and Li, 2009)