We conduct a survey experiment on the effect of information provision on attitudes towards immigration in Germany. The focus lies on two theory-based economic channels, labor market and welfare state concerns, and immigration policy preferences. Using probability-based representative survey...

In recent years, Europe has experienced an unprecedented influx of refugees. While natives' attitudes toward refugees are decisive for the political feasibility of asylum policies, little is known about how these attitudes are shaped by refugees' characteristics. We conducted survey experiments...

Risk-neutral individuals take more risky decisions when they have limited liability. Risk-neutral managers may not when acting as agents under contract and taking costly actions to acquire information before taking decisions. Limited liability makes it optimal to increase the reward for outcomes...

Using a model of repeated agency, we explain previously unexplained features of the real-world lobbying industry. Lobbying is divided between direct representation by special interests to policymakers, and indirect representation where special interests employ professional intermediaries called...

This paper analyzes the effects of taxation on information acquisition and bilateral trade in decentralized markets. We show that a profit tax and a transaction tax have opposite implications for equilibrium outcome in bargaining. A marginal increase of a transaction tax increases the incentive...

We leverage the small open economy Switzerland as a testing ground for basic premises of macroeconomic models of endogenous information acquisition, using tailored surveys of firms and households. First, we show that firms perceive a greater exposure to exchange rate movements than households,...

Many committees - juries, political task forces, etc. - spend time gathering costly information before reaching a decision. We report results from lab experiments focused on such information-collection processes. We consider decisions governed by individuals and groups and compare how voting...

When voters' trust in politicians collapses, they demand simple policies that they can easily monitor. Disenchanted citizens therefore prefer committed delegates to politicians who propose themselves as competent policy makers but without a specific policy commitment (trustees). In a two-party...

We describe a dynamic model of costly information sharing, where private information affecting collective-value actions is transmitted by social proximity. Individuals make voluntary contributions towards the provision of a pure public good, and information transmission about quality of...

This paper presents a market with asymmetric information where a privately revealing equilibrium obtains in a competitive framework and where incentives to acquire information are preserved. The equilibrium is efficient, and the paradoxes associated with fully revealing rational expectations...