We report the results of an experiment on norm violation, specifically lying, in a repeatedly played mind game with Syrian refugees in Jordan and in Germany. We compare their behavior with Jordanians, Germans, and Syrians who still live in Syria. The average number of lies is amazingly similar -...

We analyze possible links between both trust and trustworthiness among Syrian refugees in Germany in relation to the refugees' involvement in two different forms of social networking (forming bonding ties with other refugees vs. forming bridging ties between refugees and Germans). We implement...

Does the experience of civil war promote in-group bias among survivors? We try to answer this question by analyzing cooperation in a prisoner's dilemma game among Syrian refugees in two host countries, Germany and Jordan. We use a between-subjects analysis to test our in-group cooperation...

An unprecedented number of refugees from Syria has sought refuge in both the Middle East andEurope since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011. We analyze the level of altruism and risk-seeking among Syrian civil war victims in Jordan. We find systematic variations in their revealed...

The civil war in Syria has been raging since 2011. We ask whether civil war experience affects voluntary cooperation and its coordination by means of peer punishment. To answer that question, we ran experiments with Syrians and Jordanians, and use a victimization index to measure the individual...

The rule of law, a fundamental value of the European Union (EU), has come under stress in a number of its member states. The EU's response to these stresses has been criticized as politicized, slow, and unassertive. This research note develops a proposal to improve the current procedure.

Constitutional Economics - the analysis of constitutions drawing on the economic approach - has made important progress over the last two decades. The factors determining whether a constitution is complied with, however, have received only little attention. This is surprising, as a huge gap...

It is now abundantly clear that social norms channel behavior and impact economic development. This insight leads to the question: How do social norms evolve? This survey examines research that relies on geography to explain the development of social norms, and suggests that religion and family...

Over the last couple of decades, non-majoritarian institutions (NMIs) have been introduced in many countries. Of late, they have been criticized as promoting technocracy to the detriment of democracy. A number of political scientists even argue that they would strengthen populists and be, hence,...

In many modern nation states, both rich and poor, traditional law to this day plays an important role. Given the almost universal prevalence of traditional law, it is surprising how little we know about it. This is the first study that tries to take stock of traditional law from a cross-country...