Empirical evidences show that investors tend to be biased toward investing indomestic (home bias) and local (local bias) stocks. Familiarity is considered to be one of thereasons. A similar concept was proposed by Goldstein and Gigerenzer (1999, 2002), known asthe recognition heuristic: “when...

How do people make investment decisions when they receive outcome feedback? We examinedhow well the standard mean-variance model and two reinforcement models predict people’sportfolio decisions. The basic reinforcement model predicts a learning process that relies solelyon the portfolio’s...

E-nstructions facilitates the use of electronic instructions in computerized laboratory ex-periments in social sciences. In this article I provide a set of guidelines for the installationand the use of E-nstructions.

The existing literature acknowledges that a mismatch between the experimenter'sand the subjects' models of an experimental task can adversely aect the interpretation ofdata from laboratory experiments. We discuss why the two common experimental designs(between-subjects and within-subjects) used...

The Porter hypothesis suggests that environmental regulations, such as restricting firms to reduce pollution, stimulates innovations and create a win-win situation for the environment and for firms. It has received a great deal of attention from academics as well as bureaucrats who disagree...

We study time preferences in a real-effort experiment with a one-month horizon. We report thattwo thirds of choices suggest negative time preferences. Moreover, choice reversal over time iscommon even if temptation plays no role. We propose and measure three distinct concepts ofchoice reversal...

Previous research indicates that risky and uncertain marginal returnsfrom the public good significantly lower contributions. This paper presentsexperimental results illustrating that the effects of risk and uncertainty dependon the employed parameterization. Specifically, if the value of the...

The measurement of social norms plays a pivotal role in many social sciences.While economists predominantly conduct experiments, sociologistsrather employ (factorial) surveys. Both methods, however, suer from distinctweaknesses. Experiments, on the one hand, often fall short in themeasurement of...

Die menschliche Art ist eine Spezies, die durch Einsatz von Institutionen undNormensystemen kollektive Güter (oder Übel) bereitzustellen vermag.1 Kollektive Güterbilden typischerweise Antworten auf Kollektivgut-Probleme. Eine besonders wichtige Klassesolcher Kollektivgut-Probleme entsteht im...

During the last three decades the ascent of behavioral economics clearly helped tobring down artificial disciplinary boundaries between psychology and economics.Noting that behavioral economics seems still under the spell of the rational choicetradition – and, indirectly, of behaviorism – we...