We demonstrate that upward-looking comparisons induce "keeping up with the richer Joneses"-behavior. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we estimate the effect of reference consumption, defined as the consumption level of all households who are perceived to be richer, on household...

We investigate two determinants of the price sensitivity of health plan demand among retirees in the German social health insurance (SHI): the size of the choice set and the salience of premium differences. We use variation in the choice set over time and between regions, and an increase in the...

We use the German re-unification as a natural experiment to understand drivers of financial literacy accumulation. With the transformation from a planned to a market-based economy in 1990, the incentives to invest in financial literacy were changed exogenously for East Germans and remained the...

We analyze whether the frequent use of credit lines is rational or influenced by behavioral traits of households. We consider the special case of Germany where credit lines on current accounts are available to 80% of the population. We document that the excessive usage of costly credit lines is...

We examine empirically whether individuals evaluating used cars efficiently aggregate all relevant information on its constituent characteristics. Based on detailed field data on more than 80,000 used car offers in a large online marketplace, we provide evidence for biased information...

This paper aims at formulating econometric tools for investigating stochastic rationality, using the Random Utility Models (RUM) to deal with unobserved heterogeneity nonparametrically. Theoretical implications of the RUM have been studied in the literature, and in particular this paper utilizes...

We reassess the empirical effects of income and employment on self-reported well-being. Our analysis makes use of a two-step estimation procedure that allows applying instrumental variable regressions with ordinal observable data. As suggested by the theory of incomplete markets, we...

We study the Medicare Part D prescription drug insurance program as a bellwether for designs of private, non-mandatory health insurance markets that control adverse selection and assure adequate access and coverage. The value that Part D or other prescription drug coverage has for an individual...

This paper focuses on human capital and physical capital of households in Slovakia during the economic reforms of the last two decades. We compare households who entered the labor market before and after the economic reforms in 1990. On the one hand, we study the returns to education by...

Existing work on the economics of well-being suggests that a person's subjective well-being depends to a large degree on his relative standing within his social environment. In this paper, we examine whether access to modern information and telecommunication technologies has an impact on...