We examine the characteristics and the relative strength of third party sanctions in a series of experiments. We hypothesize that egalitarian distribution norms and cooperation norms apply in our experiments, and that third parties, whose economic payoff is unaffected by the norm violation, may...

One of the most basic questions in economics concerns the effects of competition on market prices. We show that the neglect of both fairness concerns and decision errors prevents a satisfactory understanding of how competition affects prices. We conducted experiments which demonstrate that the...

The paper investigates the effect of interest policy on price bubbles, trading behavior and portfolio choice in experimental stock markets. A series of experiments has 8 participants trade an asset over 15 periods. Alternatively, the participants can invest money in interest-bearing bonds....

A substantial number of people exhibit social preferences, which means they are not solely motivated by material self-interest but also care positively or negatively for the material payoffs of relevant reference agents. We show empirically that economists fail to understand fundamental economic...

Recently developed models of fairness can explain a wide variety of seemingly contradictory facts. The most controversial and yet unresolved issue in the modeling of fairness preferences concerns the behavioral relevance of fairness intentions. Intuitively, fairness intentions seem to play an...

A substantial number of people exhibit social preferences, which means they are not solely motivated by material self-interest but also care positively or negatively for the material payoffs of relevant reference agents. We show empirically that economists fail to understand fundamental economic...

To fully understand the motives for delegating a decision right, it is important to study responsibility attributions for outcomes of delegated decisions. We conducted laboratory experiments in which subjects could either choose a fair allocation or an unfair allocation or delegate the choice,...

The disposition effect, i.e., the tendency to sell winning stocks too early and losing stocks too late is one of the most frequently observed and discussed biases of financial investors. We investigate in a laboratory experiment whether the option of automatic selling devices causally reduces...

Comprehensive reforms often fail, despite being beneficial to society. Politicians may block comprehensive reforms in an attempt to form vote trading coalitions in which they benefit from a piecemeal reform at the expense of others. Because formal commitment devices for vote trading are...

On a daily level, knowledge is shared when one employee asks another for help. The positive effects of helping have been studied, but less is known about how helping can be made more efficient in terms of lowering the costs for the helpers. We investigated how two methods to channel knowledge...