Over the last decades, research in behavioural economics has demonstrated that individual welfare (utility), as relevant for economic decision making, depends not only on absolut but also on distributional aspects. Moreover, evidence is gathering that something similar holds for aggregate...

This paper reports results from a classroom dictator game comparing the effects of three different sets of standard instructions. The results show that seemingly small differences in instructions induce fundamentally different perceptions regarding entitlement. Behavior is affected accordingly,...

This paper connects insights from the literature on cosmopolitan values in political science, anxiety in social psychology, and identity economics in a vignette-style experiment. We asked German respondents about their attitudes towards a Syrian refugee, randomizing components of his description...

This paper reports the results from a statistical analysis of pharmaceutical price negotiations in Germany, where the pricing system was changed in 2011 in order to tie prices more to the benefits of the pharmaceuticals. A multiple linear regression of 187 pharmaceuticals which were assessed...

Many environment related public goods require investment of time or effort rather than simply money. Yet, most experimental studies on public good games focus on a distribution of money. In the present paper, we report results from an experiment (N=181) comparing an effort based public goods...

Is being informed about nudging detrimental to the effect of the nudge? This paper reports results from an experimental study (n = 623) testing the effects of transparency on the effectiveness of a default nudge while controlling for reactance and decision time. Overall, the data show that more...

Establishing causal relationships is a core aspect of empirical economics. Borrowing ideas from the medical sciences, we propose tentative guidelines for reliable causal inferences that cover aspects related to both the study itself and its fit with the existing background knowledge. Moreover,...