Trust is full of puzzle and paradox.Trust is both rational and emotional. Trust can go beyond calculative self-interest, but has its limits.People may want to trust, while they may also feel threatened by it.If trust is not in place prior to a relationship, on the basis of institutions, prior...

Motivated by recent interest and initiatives taken by several governments and international organizations to come up with indicators of well-being to inform policy makers, we test if subjective well-being measures (SWB) can be employed to study voting behaviour. Controlling for financial and...

We reassess the “scarring” hypothesis by Clark et al. (2001), which states that unemployment experienced in the past reduces a person’s current life satisfaction even after the person hasbecome reemployed. Our results suggest that the scar from past unemployment operates via worsened...

We study the role of self-interest and social preferences in referenda. Our analysis is based on collective purchasing decisions of university students on deep-discount flat rate tickets for public transportation and culture. Individual usage data allows quantifying monetary benefits associated...

We provide a test of the role of social preferences and beliefs in voluntary cooperation and its decline. We elicit individuals’ cooperation preferences in one experiment and use them – as well as subjects’ elicited beliefs – to explain contributions to a public good played repeatedly....

Policies and explicit private incentives designed for self-regarding individuals sometimes are less effective or even counterproductive when they diminish altruism, ethical norms and other social preferences. Evidence from 51 experimental studies indicates that this crowding out effect is...

We empirically investigate the effect of social preferences on portfolio choice. We use administrative investor data and link them to behavior in a controlled experiment and to survey responses. We show that social preferences rather than (biased) risk-return expectations are predictive for...

We investigate whether public and private sector employees differ in terms of public service motivation using a representative sample of elderly workers from 12 European countries. We find that public sector workers, both those currently employed and those already retired, are significantly more...

This paper analyzes the relations between social capital, institutions and trust.These concepts are full of ambiguity and confusion.This paper attempts to dissolve some of the confusion, by distinguishing trust and control, and analyzing institutional and relational conditions of trust.It...