Are commonly known beliefs essential for bidding behavior in asymmetric auctions? Our experimental results suggest that not informing participants how values are randomly generated does not change behavior much and may even make it appear more rational.

In a large scale newspaper experiment 5,132 readers of the German weekly, Die Zeit, participated in a three-person bargaining game. In our data analysis we focus on (1) the influence of age, gender, profession and the medium chosen for participation on bargaining behavior and on (2) the external...

Leadership is important for the well-functioning of organizations. We examine the effects of leadership on contributions in public goods experiments. Leadership by example is implemented by letting one group member contribute to the public good before followers do. Such leadership increases...

In a large scale newspaper experiment 5,132 readers of the German weekly, Die Zeit, participated in a three-person bargaining game. In our data analysis we focus on (1) the influence of age, gender, profession and the medium chosen for participation on bargaining behavior and on (2) the external...

We examine the effects of leading by example in voluntary contribution experiments. Leadership is implemented by letting one group member contribute to the public good before followers do. Such leadership increases contributions in comparison to the standard voluntary contribution mechanism,...

In an overlapping generations-experiment with multiple families participants can either support their parents directly and thereby reduce their tax burden or hope for tax-financed old age support. State productivity is captured by the factor with which total tax revenues are multiplied to...

Economic decisions have been shown to depend on actual outcomes as well as perceived intentions. In this paper, we examine whether and how the relative importance of outcomes or intentions for economic decision develops with age. We report the result of ultimatum games with children, teens and...

We study the behavior of football (soccer) referees in the German Bundesliga. Referees are requested to act as impartial agents. However, they may be tempted to allocate benefits and rewards in a biased way. Agency theory has long neglected this form of malfeasance of economic agents, but has...

Direct democracy with its use of referenda avoids the prototypical principal-agent problems of delegation in indirect democracies, especially since elected representatives are usually not committed by law to keep their promises. Sequential or more complex referenda may, however, result in an...

We present an experimental study on the wasted resources associated with tax evasion. This waste arises from taxpayers and tax authorities, investing costly effort in concealment, respectively detect ion, of tax evasion. We show that (socially inefficient) efforts depend positively on the...