Zvonimir Bašić

Welcome!

I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Economics at the Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow and Director of Glasgow Experimental Lab (GaEL).

I am an applied microeconomist specialized in behavioral and experimental economics. My research mainly focuses on understanding the foundations of prosocial, cooperative, and moral behavior.

Prior to my position in Glasgow, I obtained a PhD from the Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE) and was a Senior Research Fellow (Postdoc) at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.

CV: available here
Email: zvonimir.basic[at]glasgow.ac.uk
Google Scholar: here
Twitter: @BasicZvonimir
Bluesky: @basiczvonimir.bsky.social

Research

Publications

Personal Norms — And Not Only Social Norms — Shape Economic Behavior (with Eugenio Verrina), Journal of Public Economics, 2024, 239, 105255.
[Working paper version]

The Influence of Self and Social Image Concerns on Lying (with Simone Quercia), Games and Economic Behavior, 2022, 133, 162-169.
{Working paper version]

The Development of Egalitarian Norm Enforcement in Childhood and Adolescence (with Armin Falk and Fabian Kosse), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2020, 179, 667-680.
[Working paper version]

Working Papers

The Roots of Cooperation
(with Parampreet C. Bindra, Daniela Glätzle-Rützler, Angelo Romano, Matthias Sutter, and Claudia Zoller)

Abstract: We study the developmental roots of cooperation in 929 young children, aged 3 to 6. In a unified experimental framework, we examine pre-registered hypotheses about which of three fundamental pillars of human cooperation – direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and third-party punishment – emerges earliest and is more effective as a means to increase cooperation in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma game. We find that already children aged 3 act in a conditionally cooperative way. Yet, direct and indirect reciprocity do not increase overall cooperation rates beyond a control condition. Compared to the latter, punishment more than doubles cooperation rates, making it the most effective mechanism to promote cooperation. We also find that children’s cognitive skills and parents’ socioeconomic background influence cooperation. We complement our experimental findings with a meta-analysis of studies on cooperation among adults and older children, confirming that punishment outperforms direct and indirect reciprocity.

One size fits all? The interplay of incentives, effort provision, and personality
(with Stefania Bortolotti, Daniel Salicath, Stefan Schmidt, Sebastian Schneider, and Matthias Sutter; preregistered at AEA RCT Registry)

Abstract: Incentives are supposed to increase effort, yet individuals react differently to incentives. We examine this heterogeneity by investigating how personal characteristics, preferences, and socio-economic background relate to incentives and performance in a real effort task. We analyze the performance of 1,933 high-school students under a Fixed, Variable, or Tournament payment. Productivity and beliefs about relative performance, but hardly any personal characteristics, play a decisive role for performance when payment schemes are exogenously imposed. Only when given the choice to select the payment scheme, personality traits, economic preferences and socio-economic background matter. Algorithmic assignment of payment schemes could improve performance, earnings, and utility, as we show.

Work in Progress

Social Identity and Systematic Biases
(with Eugenio Verrina and Stefan Schmidt)

Short summary: Selection bias, correlation neglect, and confirmation bias commonly appear in information structures where social identity motives are present. We study how social identity and the three biases together affect belief formation.

Personal Norms, Social Norms, and Political Preferences
(with Eugenio Verrina)

Short summary: We study how political preferences relate to the patterns of personal and social norms as well as to the weight placed on them in the decision-making process.

Self-image, Social Image, and Prosocial Behavior
(with Armin Falk and Simone Quercia)

Short summary: We design symmetric maniplatutions of self and social image concerns and investigate their effect on prosocial behavior in a dictator game (n = 531). To do so, we exogenously increase self-awareness and observability, directing a person's focus on their private and public selves, respectively.

Quantitative Patterns of Cooperation in Social-Dilemma Experiments with Minimum Identifiability
(with Yini Geng, Ivan Romić, Lei Shi, Eizo Akiyama, Matjaž Perc, Zhen Wang, and Marko Jusup)

Short summary: In a study conducted across 3 countries, we investigate how minimal information — one's gender — in an otherwise anonymous setup affects cooperative behavior in a repeated prisoner's dilemma game.