In this paper we investigate the influence of financial incentives on agents’ commitment success who use a self-bet mechanism to overcome their self-control problems. We use results from the theoretical model developed in Hirt-Schierbaum and Ivets (2020) that allows for heuristic bias in...

Climate change can be addressed by mitigation and adaptation approaches at the national policy level. Since only limited resources are available for both strategies, it is key to unravel how ongoing climate developments and their communication influence the population’s preferences regarding...

Today more than 2.7 billion people rely on biomass as their primary cooking fuel, with profound implications for the environment and people's well-being. Wood provision is often time-consuming and the emitted smoke has severe health effects - both burdens that afflict women in particular. The...

In the public promotion of R&D cluster and network formation, the following situation typically arises: An initial network structure has developed over a long time span and policy measures affect the structure of links between the actors. This new network structure influences the effectiveness...

This paper investigates the behavior of contestants in the game show "Quiz Taxi" when faced with the decision whether to bet the winnings they have acquired on a final "double or nothing" question. The decision is made by groups of two or three persons. This set-up enables the decision making...

When properly implemented, Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) can achieve a high degree of internal validity. Yet, if an RCT is to inform policy interventions that extend beyond the experimental population, it is critical to establish external validity. In this paper, we first present a...

The classical Heckman (1976, 1979) selection correction estimator (heckit) is misspecified and inconsistent if an interaction of the outcome variable and an explanatory variable matters for selection. To address this specification problem, a full information maximum likelihood estimator and a...

We test whether financial incentives have an effect on weight reduction in a randomized controlled trial involving 700 obese persons assigned to three experimental groups. While two treatment groups obtain €150 and €300, respectively, for achieving an individually assigned target weight...

While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the “gold standard” for impact evaluation, they face numerous practical barriers to implementation. In some circumstances, a randomized-encouragement design (RED) is a viable alternative, but applications are surprisingly rare. We discuss the...

We conduct a framed field experiment in Indonesian fishing communities, with an eye towards evaluating the potential of Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries (TURFs) to preserve coral reef fisheries. Conducted in three culturally distinctive sites, the study assembles groups of five fishers who...