Bidding challenges learning theories. Even with the same bid, experiences vary stochastically: the same choice can result in either a gain or a loss. In such an environment, the question arises of how the nearly universally documented phenomenon of loss aversion affects the adaptive dynamics. We...

In January 2005, the German Supreme Court permitted the state governments to charge tuition fees. By exploiting the natural experiment, we examine how government ideology influenced tuition fee policy. The results show that right-wing governments were active in introducing tuition fees. By...

We study a fundamental conflict in economic decision-making, the trade-off between equality, equity and incentives, in a new experimental game that nests a voluntary contributions mechanism in a broader spectrum of incentive schemes. In a 2×2 design, we let subjects either vote on or...

We measure productivity in leading edge economic research by using data envelopment analysis (DEA) for a sample of 21 countries belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Publications in ten top journals of economics from 1980 to 1998 are taken as the research...

Even though decision-making in small teams is pervasive in business and private life, little is known about subjects' preferences with respect to individual and team decision-making and about the consequences of respecting these preferences. We report the results from an experimental...

Experimental studies on bidding in auctions have so far relied on individual bidders, even though teams are often involved in real auctions. We examine the bidding behaviour of individuals and teams. Our experimental results show that teams stay longer in an (ascending sealed-bid English)...

Am 11. und 12. Juni 2013 hat das Bundesverfassungsgericht Experten zur Krisenpolitik der EZB angehört. Dabei ging es um die Frage, ob oder inwieweit die EZB durch das Outright-Monetary-Transactions-Programm (OMT) Kompetenzen beansprucht, die ihr nicht übertragen worden sind. Wir...

We compare the behavior of groups and individuals in a two-person trust game. The first mover in this game, the sender, receives an endowment and can send any part of it to the responder; the amount sent is tripled, and the responder can then return to the sender any portion of the tripled sum....