Social norms permeate society across a wide range of issues and are important to understanding how societies function. In this paper we concentrate on 'bad' social norms - those that are inefficient or even damaging to a group. This paper explains how bad social norms evolve and persist; our...

In four independent Chapters, I examine how norms guide our behavior in an uncertain world. Methodologically, I apply the toolbox of experimental economics to research questions that are on the interface between economics and law (especially Chapter 1 and Chapter 2), sociology (especially...

This paper provides an argument for the advantage of a preference for identity-consistent behaviour from an evolutionary point of view. Within a stylised model of social interaction, we show that the development of cooperative social norms is greatly facilitated if the agents of the society...

Hypocrisy is the act of claiming moral standards to which one's own behavior does not conform. Instances of hypocrisy, such as the supposedly green furnishing group IKEA's selling of furniture made from illegally felled wood, are frequently reported in the media. In a controlled and incentivized...

We study the implications of a particular form of irrationality on the pricing behavior of firms in a monopolistic-competitive market with incomplete information. We assume that firms are overconfident, meaning that they over-estimate their abilities to understand the correct model of the...