This paper evaluates the effects of a high school curriculum reform that was introduced in one German state on high school dropout. The reform increased the standards of the curriculum by reducing the freedom of choice in course selection (amongst other things) resulting in an increase in the...

Covid-19 pandemic has shown how important are public sector capacities and capabilities to react to crises and re-configure existing policies and implementation practices. Prior to the pandemic, policymakers were increasingly turning their attention to challenge-driven innovation policies in...

Smoking bans have been widely implemented, despite mixed evidence on their effectiveness in reducing firsthand smoking. This paper provides novel insights into the dynamic impacts of smoking bans in the context of a large developing country, Brazil, that had more than 18.6 million regular...

To adequately design and implement effective environmental policies, it is paramount for policymakers to understand preferences for regulatory instruments as well as their individual level determinants. In this study, I experimentally investigate the demand for three environmental policies,...

To counteract the financial pressure emerging in aging societies, statutory pay-as-you-go pension schemes are undergoing fundamental reforms in many Western countries. Starting with cohort 1937, Germany introduced permanent pension deductions for early retirement. This paper examines the...

Firms often set long notice periods when consumers cancel a contract, and sometimes do so even when the costs of changing or canceling the contract are small. We investigate a model in which a firm offers a contract to consumers who may procrastinate canceling it due to naive present-bias. We...

In a field experiment with 341 participants, we study whether social comparisons, either in isolation or in combination with a climate-related moral appeal, can change the use of public and car-related transportation. We do so in the context of a mobility budget offered to employees of a large...

We test whether and, if so, how incentives to promote pro-social behavior affect the extent to which it spills over to subsequent charitable giving. To do so, we conduct a two-period artefactual field experiment to study repeated donation decisions of more than 700 participants. We vary how...

We explore the role of social capital in the spread of the recent Covid-19 pan­demic in independent analyses for Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Swe­den, Switzerland and the UK. We exploit within-country variation in social capital and Covid-19 cases to show that high-social-capital...

Willingness to vaccinate and test are critical in the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the effects of two measures to increase vaccination and testing: "choice architecture" and monetary compensations. Choice architecture has the goal of "nudging" people into a socially desired direction without...