Abstract This study presents results of the validation of an ultra-short survey measure of patience included in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). Survey responses predict intertemporal choice behavior in incentive-compatible decisions in a representative sample of the German adult population.

We observe that identification of the discount rate from experimental data requires an assumption about the consumption period, the length of time over which a payment will be turned into utility-providing consumption. We show that the optimal consumption period is substantially longer than...

We test experimentally a prediction of the ‘moral credit model’, in which committing a virtuous act creates moral credits that can license immoral behavior in a succeeding decision. We use a basic cheating experiment that was either preceded by a virtuous deed or not in a developing country...

We investigate the role personality plays in Finitely Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma (FRPD) games. Even after controlling for demographic factors such as race, course of study, and cognitive ability, we find that cooperative behavior is significantly related to the Big Five personality trait...

We test the implications of ambiguity aversion in a principal–agent problem with multiple agents. Models of ambiguity aversion suggest that, under ambiguity, comparative compensation schemes may become more attractive than independent wage contracts. We test this by presenting agents with a...

We add social norms into Laffont’s mechanism designed for environmental risk. We find with endogenous social norms and asymmetric information about personal norms, the optimal contract induces more (less) effort from the “green” (“brown”) firm.

Hyperbolic discounting with naiveté is widely believed to provide a better explanation than exponential discounting of why people borrow so much and why they wait so long to save for retirement. We reach a different set of conclusions. We show that if financial planning is enriched to include...

How do people react to a mix of good deeds to a third party and bad deeds against them? A modified ultimatum game shows that previous good deeds make responders substantially more tolerant to unfair proposals.

The overconfidence bias is discussed extensively in economic studies, yet fails to hold experimentally once monetary incentives and feedback are implemented. We consider overconfidence as a social bias. For a simple real effort task, we show that, individually, economic conditions effectively...

In this paper we propose a new strategy for comparing the behavior of a hyperbolic discounter who possesses self-control problems to an exponential discounter who does not. Our strategy controls for inherent differences in overall levels of impatience across discount functions, which thereby...