Low self-control is considered a fundamental cause of crime. The aim of our study is to provide causal evidence on the link between self-control and criminal behavior. We test whether individuals with lower self-control behave in a more antisocial manner and are less risk-averse and thus are,...

The motivation value of confidence postulates that individual effort provision is increasing in beliefs on one's own productivity. This relationship also holds for overconfident individuals who have exaggerated productivity beliefs (motivation value of overconfidence). We present first empirical...

In this paper, we shed light on the different moral costs of dishonesty and stealing. To accomplish this, we set up a die-rolling task which allowed participants to increase their own payout through dishonesty or theft. The results show that participants have fewer reservations about dishonesty...

We propose a broadly applicable empirical approach to classify individuals as timeconsistent versus na¨ıve or sophisticated regarding their self-control limitations. Operationalizing our approach based on nationally representative data reveals that self-control problems are pervasive and that...

Economic theory and empirical evidence establish that economic preferences predict behavior and life outcomes for children, adolescents, and adults. In this paper, we use novel data on 4,282 siblings aged 6 to 16 that combine incentivized measures of time, risk, and social preferences with...

This paper explores whether loss aversion applies to social image concerns. In a simple model, we combine loss aversion in social image concerns and attitudes towards lying. We then test its predictions in a laboratory experiment. Subjects are first ranked publicly in a social image relevant...

This paper explores the individual and joint predictive power of concepts from economics, psychology, and criminology for individual norm enforcement behavior. More specifically, we consider economic preferences (patience and attitudes towards risk), personality traits from psychology (Big Five...

We conducted a laboratory experiment to examine how honesty depends on social distance. Participants cast dice and reported the outcomes to allocate money between themselves and fellow students or the socially distant experimenter. They could lie about outcomes to earn more money. We found that...

We assess the predictive power of a model of other-regarding preferences - inequality aversion - using a within-subjects design. We run four different experiments (ultimatum game, dictator game, sequential-move prisoners' dilemma and public-good game) with the same sample of subjects. We elicit...