This paper investigates whether the relationship between a person's occupational status and well-being differs across countries with varying institutional contexts. We find that the relationship between job- and life satisfaction of self-employed people as well as of paid employees varies...

This paper analyzes the role of different types of institutions, such as entrepreneurship- facilitating entry conditions, labor market regulations, quality of government, and perception of corruption for individual well-being among self-employed and paid employed individuals. Well-being is...

Individual decision-making in Pay-What-You-Want settings is prone to social influence. Es pecially payment observability and the social relationship with other buyers during the payment decision are two important components of social influence. In practical applications of Pay-What-You-Want both...

The Theory of Dyadic Morality (TDM; Schein and Gray (2018)) posits that immorality judgments emerge from norm violations, harm perceptions, and negative affect. We test this core prediction in an applied setting: voluntary payment settings, such as the Pay-What-You-Want mechanism. In our study,...

Economists have been theorizing that other-regarding preferences influence decision making. Yet, what are the corresponding psychological mechanisms that inform these preferences in laboratory games? Empathy and Theory of Mind (ToM) are dispositions considered to be essential in social...

We investigate to what extent genuine social preferences can explain observed other-regarding behavior. In a dictator game variant subjects can choose whether to learn about the consequences of their choice for the receiver. We find that a majority of subjects showing other-regarding behavior...

We study time preferences in a real-effort experiment with a one-month horizon. We report that two thirds of choices suggest negative time preferences. Moreover, choice reversal over time is common even if temptation plays no role. We propose and measure three distinct concepts of choice...

Using a laboratory experiment, we examine whether informal monetary sanctions can lead to better coordination in a repeated minimum effort coordination game. While most groups first experience inefficient coordination, the efficiency increases substantially after introducing an ex post...

In economic theory, utility depends on past, present and future outcomes. The experiment described in this paper suggests that utility also depends on people's attitudes, and that it can easily be manipulated through these attitudes. The results imply, first, that purely outcome-based models of...

In-group favoritism in social dilemma situations is one of the main findings of studies in Social Identity Theory. We investigate what causes the in-group bias: is it due to mere group affiliation or, alternatively, is guilt-aversion a possible explanation? We induce group membership in a...