Many information structures generate correlated rather than mutually independent signals, the news media being a prime example. This paper shows experimentally that in such contexts many people neglect these correlations in the updating process and treat correlated information as independent. In...

Theory of mind and individual preferences are important determinants in social decision making. The current study examined in a large sample whether being a cooperative preference type is related with better theory of mind skills. Furthermore, by testing adolescents and adults, we examined the...

We examine the relationship between the prices paid by households and their shopping patterns measured in terms of shopping frequency and the range of stores visited. We use the TNS data which allows us to control for household heterogeneity. The main contribution of the paper is that we find...

For the procurement of complex goods the early exchange of information is important to avoid costly renegotiation ex post. We show that this is achieved by bilateral negotiations but not by auctions. Negotiations strictly outperforms auctions if sellers are likely to have superior information...

In Switzerland, two key church institutions – the Conference of Swiss Bishops (CSB) and the Federation of Protestant Churches (FPC) – make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this unique situation to directly measure religious organizations’ power to...

We examine peer effects in risk taking with complete information and compare explanations for peer effects based on relative payoff concerns to explanations that allow peer choices to matter. We vary experimentally whether individuals can condition a simple lottery choice on the lottery choice,...

Using a natural voting experiment in Switzerland that encompasses a 160-year period (1848–2009), we investigate whether a higher level of complexity leads to increased reliance on expert knowledge. We find that when more referenda are held on the same day, constituents are more likely to refer...

Firms adjust to differences in market size and demand uncertainty by changing the frequency and size of their export shipments. In our inventory model, transportation costs and optimal shipment frequency are determined on the basis of demand as well as inventory and per shipments costs. Using a...

We study how net neutrality regulations affect a high-bandwidth content provider’s (CP) investment incentives in quality of services (QoS). We find that the effects crucially depend on network capacity levels. With limited capacity, as in mobile networks, prioritized delivery services are...

We study contestability in non-profit markets when non-commercial providers supply a homogeneous collective good through increasing-returns-to-scale technologies. Unlike in the case of for-profit competition, in the non-profit case the absence of price-based sales contracts means that fixed...