A vast body of empirical studies lends support to the incentive effects of rank-order tournaments. Evidence comes from experiments in laboratories and non-experimental studies exploiting sports or firm data. Selection of competitors across tournaments may bias these non-experimental studies,...

We devise a new experimental game by nesting a voluntary contributions mechanism in a broader spectrum of incentive schemes. With it, we study tensions between egalitarianism, equity concerns, self-interest, and the need for incentives. In a 2x2 design, subjects eithervote on or exogenously...

The ever greater role given to public participation by laws and regulations, in particular in the field of environmental management calls for new operational methods and tools for managers and practitioners. This paper analyses the potentials and the critical limitations of current approaches in...

This paper reports on an experiment designed to examine the effects of small-scale changes in wealth on risk attitudes. We find that the money given prior to risky choices does not induce a change of subjects' risk preferences. This result supports a key assumption in a recent literature over...

Die Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit einer axiomatischen Charakterisierung von Wahlfreiheit. Im ersten Teil analysiere ich im statischen Kontext bestehende Axiomensysteme und erarbeite ihre impliziten normativen Annahmen und Defizite. Aus ihnen leite ich die Notwendigkeit ab, sowohl die...

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde auf der Grundlage eines intuitiven Risikobegriffs von "Risiko als Ausmaß der Gefahr der Unterschreitung einer angestrebten Zielgröße" eine allgemeine strukturelle Quantifizierung des Risikopotentials einer Wahrscheinlichkeitsverteilung im Sinne eines...

This thesis contributes to the development of theoretical and experimental approaches that extend the analysis of risk preferences beyond the classical concept of expected utility theory. The thesis contains four main chapters.The first two chapters are concerned with extensions and applications...