We investigate the possibility that a decision-maker prefers to avoid making a decision and instead delegates it to an external device, e.g., a coin flip. In a series of experiments the participants often choose lotteries between allocations, which contradicts most theories of choice such as...

We study an investment experiment conducted with a representative sample of German households. Respondents invest in a safe asset and a risky asset whose return is tied to the German stock market. Experimental investments correlate with beliefs about stock market returns and exhibit desirable...

Multiplicative growth processes that are subject to random shocks often have a skewed distribution of outcomes. In a number of incentivized laboratory experiments we show that a large majority of participants either strongly underestimate skewness or ignore it completely. Participants...

We repeatedly elicit beliefs about the returns to study effort, in a large university course. A behavioral model of quasi-hyperbolic discounting and malleable beliefs predicts that the dynamics of beliefs mirrors the importance of exerting self-control, such that believed returns increase as the...

We study whether individuals in a face-to-face situation can successfully exert some lying effort to delude others. We exploit data from a laboratory experiment in which participants were asked to assess videotaped statements as being rather truthful or untruthful. The statements are...

We study donor loyalty in the context of church membership in Germany. Church members have to make substantial payments to their church but can opt out at any time. In a large-scale field experiment, we examine how private recognition for past payments affects church members’ loyalty. We find...

This paper studies how imposing norms on contribution behavior affects individuals’ intrinsic motivation. We consider the church levy, which the Catholic Church in Germany collects as a charitable donation, despite the fact that the levy is legally a tax. We design a randomized field...

We study donor loyalty in the context of church membership in Germany. Church members have to make substantial payments to their church but can opt out at any time. In a large-scale field experiment, we examine how private recognition for past payments affects church members' loyalty. We find...

Many societies aim to design policies based on meritocratic fairness, which involves two principles: (i) paying individuals with equal performance equally (fair equality) and (ii) paying individuals with higher performance more (fair inequality). Yet, often it is impossible to respect both...

We run an online experiment to study the origins of algorithm aversion. Participants are either in the role of workers or of managers. Workers perform three real-effort tasks: task 1, task 2, and the job task which is a combination of tasks 1 and 2. They choose whether the hiring decision...