We introduce the give-or-destroy game that allows us to fully elicit an individual s social preference schedule. We find that about one third of the population exhibits both pro-social and anti-social preferences that are independent of payoff comparisons with those who are affected. We call...

This paper tests social identity theory with respect to individuals' self-identification behavior. We report results from a laboratory experiment in which subjects choose their group membership, which is interpreted as decision to identify with the respective group. Inducing a trade-off between...

In a fair division game an indivisible object with an unknown common value is owned by a group of individuals and should be allocated to one of them while the others are compensated monetarily. Implementing fair division games in the lab, we fi nd many occurrences of the winner's curse under the...

In four studies (S1-S4; N = 320) we investigated whether moral hypocrisy (MH) is motivated by conscious impression management concerns or whether it is self-deceptive. In a dictator game, MH occurred both within participants (saying one thing, doing another; S1) and between participants (doing...

Do contracts provide reference points that affect ex post behavior? We address this question in a canonical buyer-seller relationship with renegotiation. Our paper provides causal experimental evidence that an initial contract has a highly significant and economically important impact on...

We study risk-aversion and prudence in medical treatment decisions. In a laboratory experiment, we investigate the frequency and intensity of second- and third-order risk preferences, as well as the effect of the medical decision context. Risk preferences are assessed through treatment...

We investigate one possible explanation for corrupt behavior namely that individual decision makers who engage frequently in illegal actions might underestimate the overall probability of being caught. This might be in particular true for petty corruption where small amounts of bribes are...

We investigate the impact of mutual support in case of financial losses within a multi-ethnical society in Vietnam by using an experimental approach. We test for the effects of ethnic discrimination with regards to risk sharing by conducting the Solidarity Game based on Selten & Ockenfels...

In this paper we analyze a consumer choice model with price uncertainty, loss aversion, and expectation-based reference points. The implications of this model are tested in an experiment in which participants have to make a consumption choice between two sandwiches. We make use of the fact that...