Broken Windows: the metaphor has changed New York and Los Angeles. Yet it is far from undisputed whether the broken windows policy was causal for reducing crime. In a series of lab experiments we show that first impressions are indeed causal for cooperativeness in three different institutional...

Evidence from an experiment investigating the "house money effect" in the context of a public goods game is reconsidered. Analysis is performed within the framework of the panel hurdle model, in which subjects are assumed to be one of two types: free-riders, and potential contributors. The...

Legal realists expect prosecutors to be selfish. If they get the defendant convicted, this helps them advance their careers. If the odds of winning on the main charge are low, prosecutors have a second option. They can exploit the ambiguity of legal doctrine and charge the defendant for vaguely...

Customary law has been criticized from very different angles. Rational choice theorists claim that what looks like custom is nothing but self-interest. Positivists doubt that anything beyond consent assumes the force of law. In this paper, we adopt an experimental approach to test these claims....

The opportunity to voice one's opinion about a decision is a fundamental aspect of procedural fairness and applies to a large variety of economic interactions. Voice may influence decision makers, but at the same time it shapes behavior of those who can voice their opinion. We study the latter...

For a rational choice theorist, the absence of crime is more difficult to explain than its presence. Arguably, the expected value of criminal sanctions, i.e. the product of severity times certainty, is often below the expected benefit. We rely on a standard theory from behavioral economics,...

The paper investigates the introduction of an institution, in form of an impartial authority (third party), into a two-person situation. The impartial authority can reward a stranger for acting according to a desired behavioral norm. The reward is costly for the authority and her behavior cannot...

Punishees regularly ask for justification. But is justification also effective? To answer this question under controlled conditions, we have conducted a public goods experiment with central punishment. The authority is neutral - she does not benefit from contributions to the public good....

We study experimentally whether and to what extent impartial decision makers are influenced by stakeholders ́fairness opinions in an allocation decision. The setting allows for different focal fairness rules to be considered. We compare communication treatments, in which one of the stakeholders...

For decades, experimental economics has been very interested in behavior that could be characterized as practicing solidarity (although the term is rarely used). Solidarity is a key concept in Catholic Social Teaching. This paper builds a bridge between these two endeavors that, thus far, had...