Many papers have reported behavioral biases in belief formation that come on top of standard game-theoretic reasoning. We show that the processes involved depend on the way participants reason about their beliefs. When they think about what everybody else or another "unspeci fied" individual is...

We conduct a laboratory experiment to explore whether loss aversion applies to social image concerns. First, subjects are ranked publicly in a social image relevant domain, an IQ test, to establish own rank as a within-subject reference point. We then induce an exogenous change in within-subject...

In this thesis I present three essays in which the influence of heuristics on individual decision making is analyzed and two essays dealing with behavioral aspects of moral costs. In chapter two, we investigate the effect a traders’ decision can have on the disposition effect heuristic when...

This thesis contributes to the research on other regarding preferences by experimental studies. Chapter 1 investigates the feasibility of efficiency gains in a principal-agent relationship by voluntary leadership. Chapter 2 investigates whether negative reciprocity can be documented if the worse...