In a tedious real effort task, subjects know that their piece rate is either low or ten times higher. When subjects are informed about their piece rate realization, they adapt their performance. One third of subjects nevertheless forego this instrumental information when given the choice - and...

This paper studies how individual characteristics, institutions, and their interaction influence moral decisions. We validate a moral paradigm focusing on the willingness to accept harming third parties. Consequences of moral decisions are real. We explore how moral behavior varies with...

A well-known theoretical result in the contest literature is that greater heterogeneity decreases performance of contestants because of the "discouragement effect." Leveling the playing field by favoring weaker contestants through bid-caps and favorable tie-breaking rules can reduce the...

Information about the future may be instrumentally useful, yet scary. For example, many patients shy away from precise genetic tests about their dispositions for severe diseases. They are afraid that a bad test result could render them desperate due to anticipatory feelings. We show that...

Auctions are the allocation-mechanisms of choice whenever goods and information in markets are scarce. Therefore, understanding how information affects welfare and revenues in these markets is of fundamental interest. We introduce new statistical concepts, k- and k-m-dispersion, for...

In auction and mechanism design, Myerson's classical regularity condition is often too weak for a quantitative analysis of performance. For instance, ratios between revenue and welfare, or sales probabilities may vanish at the boundary of Myerson regularity. This paper introduces L-regularity as...

As was recognized by Bentham, skillfulness is an important source of pleasure. Humans like achievement and to excel in tasks relevant to them. This paper provides controlled experimental evidence that striving for pleasures of skill can have negative moral consequences and causally reduce moral...

We study how institutional design in influences moral transgression. People are heterogeneous in their feelings of guilt and can share guilt with others. Institutions determine the number of supporters necessary for immoral outcomes to occur. With more supporters required, every supporter can...

Willingness to vaccinate and test are critical in the COVID-19 pandemic. We study the effects of two measures to increase vaccination and testing: "choice architecture" and monetary compensations. Choice architecture has the goal of "nudging" people into a socially desired direction without...

We study individual demand for COVID-19 antibody tests in an incentivized study on a representative sample of the US population. Almost 2,000 participants trade off obtaining an athome test kit against money. At prices close to zero, 80 percent of individuals want the test. However, this broad...