This paper provides a systematic analysis of individual attitudes towards ambiguity, based on laboratory experiments. The design of the analysis allows to capture individual behavior across various levels of ambiguity, ranging from low to high. Attitudes towards risk and attitudes towards...

We consider the interaction of intrinsic motivation and concerns for social approval in a laboratory experiment. We elicit a proxy for Fairtrade preferences before the experiment. In the experiment, we elicit willingness to pay for conventional and Fairtrade chocolate. Treatments vary whether...

Why do some people behave pro-socially while others do not? Using an experimental design based on Konow and Earley (JPubE, 2008), I investigate a reason already proposed by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics: He claims that there is a nexus between virtues and well-being and that enduring...

We analyze how subjects' self-assessment depends on whether its accuracy is observable to others. We find that women downgrade their self-assessment given observability while men do not. Women avoid the shame they may have if others observe that they overestimated themselves. Men, however, do...

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...

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...

Dual-process theories view decisions as the result of the interaction of two qualitatively different types of processes, automatic/impulsive and controlled/deliberative. This paper considers a model of self-control where each decision can be taken by either an automatic process or a deliberative...

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...

The psychology literature provides ample evidence that people have difficulties taking the perspective of less informed others. This paper presents a controlled experiment showing that this "curse of knowledge" can cause comparative overconfidence and overentry into competition. In a broader...

The assumptions that subjects hold beliefs and that the chosen actions are not altered by a proper elicitation of these beliefs are widely used in economics. In this paper I experimentally test whether the second assumption is correct. Especially controlling for different game properties, I nd...