Spite

This is from Eliana Zeballos, who is on the job market this year from UC Davis and appears to be a very interesting candidate.  Here is part of the abstract of her job market paper (pdf):

The experimental games were conducted in Bolivia among285 dairy farmers. Results show that when participants were presented with their ranking and the earnings of others in their group, those below the group mean increased their effort whereas those above the group mean decreased their effort. When destructive actions were allowed, 55 percent of the participants were willing to forego own-consumption in order to burn others’ output; 58 percent were victims of destructive actions and lost, on average, a third of their earnings. There is an asymmetry in the direction of destruction: almost all of the highest earners suffered some destruction while only a quarter of the lowest earners were victims of destructive actions. Finally, the threat of destructive actions reduced the highest earning participants’ effort by 5.8 percent.

For the pointer I thank Ben Southwood.