Most economic models are based on the self-interest hypothesis that assumes that all people are exclusively motivated by their material self-interest. In recent years experimental economists have gathered overwhelming evidence that systematically refutes the self-interest hypothesis and suggests...

Two independent, but related, choice prediction competitions are organized that focus on behavior in simple two-person extensive form games (http://sites.google.com/site/extformpredcomp/): one focuses on predicting the choices of the first mover and the other on predicting the choices of the...

We study behavior in a moonlighting game with unequal initial endowments. In this game, predictions for second-mover behavior based on inequality aversion are in contrast to reciprocity. We find that inequality aversion explains only few observations. The comparison to a treatment with equal...

Willingness to take risk depends on whether the risk affects others as well as oneself and on how the risk affects oneś position vis-á-vis others. Taking a bet can improve oneś position relative to others or threaten it. We present an experiment that explores individual attitudes to lotteries...

We introduce the give-or-destroy game that allows us to fully elicit an individual s social preference schedule. We find that about one third of the population exhibits both pro-social and anti-social preferences that are independent of payoff comparisons with those who are affected. We call...

Democratic countries with substantial inequality and where people believe that success depends on connections and luck induce political support for high tax rates and generous welfare states. Traditional wisdom is that such policies harm the economy, but there is not much evidence that countries...