Societies today are increasingly reliant on whistleblowing to uncover unfair practices. For policy design it is therefore essential to better understand the impact of socio-psychological factors on whistleblowing propensity. We use an experimental setup to explore the role of “Diffusion of...

We investigate the effects of voting power in a committee in which one member (the chairman) holds, on top of a regular vote, also the power to break ties. The chairman is able to induce her preferred outcome much more often than predicted by theory, but only partially because of exercising...

We show theoretical and experimental results that demonstrate the potential of transparency to influence committee decision making and deliberation. We present a model in which committee members have career concerns and unanimity is needed to change the status quo. We study three scenarios -...

We examine the incentives to self-select into politics. To this end, we set up a two-stage political competition model and test its key mechanisms in the lab. At the entry stage, potential candidates compete in a contest to become their party’s nominee. At the election stage, the nominated...

Do politico-economic systems influence how control affects motivation? We hypothesize that control aversion, meaning crowding-out of intrinsic motivation due to enforcement, has evolved less under the coercive regime of East Germany than under the liberal regime of West Germany. We test this...

I investigate if, how, and why the effect of a contribution rule in a public goods game depends on how it is implemented: endogenously chosen or externally imposed. The rule prescribes full contributions to the public good backed by a nondeterrent sanction for those who do not comply. My...

This paper investigates the impact of insurance contract design on the behavior of filing fraudulent claims in an experimental setup. We test whether or not peoples' fraud behavior varies for insurance contracts with full coverage, a straight deductible or variable premiums (bonus-malus...

Asset management often involves a conflict of interests between investors and fund managers. A main goal of financial regulators is to identify and mitigate this conflict. This article focuses on measures that may foster protection of investors' interests. In an experiment capturing the...

We conduct multi-person one-shot ultimatum games that reflect important aspects of collective bargaining. In all treatments a proposer has to divide a pie among herself and six recipients that are divided into two groups of three. The proposer cannot discriminate among, but across group members....

We present the results of an experiment that measures social preferences within couples in a context where intra-household pay-off inequality can be reduced at the cost of diminishing household income. We measure social norms regarding this efficiency-equality trade-off and implement a...