Social institutions are persistent regularities in contracting and other relations amongst men and in the unintended consequences of such rule-like behavior. They include morality and law as well as institutions of governance such as branding and advertising. Institutions are studied in all...

We examine the evolution of decentralized clearinghouse mechanisms from the 13th to the 18th century; in particular, we explore the clearing of non- or limitedtradable debts like bills of exchange. We construct a theoretical model of these clearinghouse mechanisms, similar to the models in the...

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...

This paper studies how individual characteristics, institutions, and their interaction influence moral decisions. We validate a moral paradigm focusing on the willingness to accept harming third parties. Consequences of moral decisions are real. We explore how moral behavior varies with...

We design and implement an iterative, program-proposing deferred acceptance mechanism with ties (IDAT) and apply it to childcare assignment in two German cities. The mechanism can accommodate complementarities in providers' preferences, is fast to terminate even in larger cities, is difficult to...

This paper studies, theoretically and experimentally, whether the entitlement effect created by deservingness affects the willingness to lie. In a laboratory experiment, we compare the lying behavior of high-endowment participants with low-endowment participants. In one treatment, the allocation...

This paper analyses the causal effects of weaker dismissal protection on the incidence of long-term sickness ( six weeks). We exploit a German policy change, which shifted the threshold exempting small establishments from dismissal protection from five to ten workers. Using administrative data,...

We study the causal effect of the possibility to vote on foreigners propensity to naturalize, a key indicator of successful integration. Based on Swedish administrative data and an institutional setting producing a quasi-random assignment of the eligibility to vote, we find that the overall...

We consider a budget-constrained mechanism designer who selects an optimal set of projects to maximize her utility. Projects may differ in their value for the designer, and their cost is private information. In this allocation problem, the quantity of procured projects is endogenously determined...

A growing experimental literature studies the endogenous choice of institutions to solve cooperation problems arising in prisoners' dilemmas, public goods games, and common pool resource games. Participants in these experiments have the opportunity to influence the rules of the game before they...