Recent studies find that women are less competitive than men. This gender difference in competitiveness has been suggested as one possible explanation for why men occupy the majority of top positions in many sectors. In this study we explore competitiveness in children, with the premise that...

Trust in strangers is key for economic development. Social capital theory posits that participation in associations is essential to propagate trust in society, because membership instils trust both towards other members and generalised others. We provide an experimental test for this thesis. We...

There is now an extensive literature on "gift exchange" showing that when principals and agents can trade "gifts" (rewards that should not emerge in a competitive equilibrium), exchange becomes more efficient. However, it is not obvious how gift exchange should be organized if the principal's...

Social comparison nudges that employ descriptive norms were found to increase charitable giving. This paper finds that individuals who receive a descriptive norm donate significantly more when they have to guess the descriptive norm beforehand. We argue that guessing draws attention to the norm...

The ability of a tax authority to successfully collect taxes depends critically on both its relationship with the taxpayers and how strongly these taxpayers are committed to contributing to the common good. We present evidence on a new non-intrusive approach aimed at fostering the commitment to...

Policymakers are increasingly interested these days in how they can achieve desired outcomes using 'nudges' - low-cost and non-obtrusive interventions which rely on psychological mechanisms, rather than high-powered economic incentives, to influence people's behaviour. This paper applies the...

There has been little systematic study of the mechanisms typically used to raise money for charity. One of the most common is the simple raffle in which participants purchase chances to win a prize at a constant price. We conduct a field experiment randomly assigning participants to four raffle...

We study how website defaults affect consumer behavior in the domain of charitable giving. In a field experiment that was conducted on a large platform for making charitable donations over the web, we exogenously vary the default options in two distinct choice dimensions. The first pertains to...

We complement the empirical evidence on the sustainability of weight loss achieved through cash rewards and, for the first time, rigorously examine the potential of cash rewards to prevent weight cycling. In a three period randomized controlled trial, about 700 obese persons were first assigned...

We study how website defaults affect consumer behavior in the domain of charitable giving. In a field experiment that was conducted on a large platform for making charitable donations over the web, we exogenously vary the default options in two distinct choice dimensions. The first pertains to...