Credence goods markets are characterized by asymmetric information between sellers and consumers that may give rise to inefficiencies, such as under- and overtreatment or market break-down. We study in a large experiment with 936 participants the determinants for efficiency in credence goods...

We study the effects of communication in an experimental tournament between teams. When teams, rather than individuals, compete for a prize there is a need for intra-team coordination in order to win the inter-team competition. Introducing communication in such situations may have ambiguous...

We study behavior in a search experiment where sellers receive randomized bids from a computer. At any time, sellers can accept the highest standing bid or ask for another bid at positive costs. We find that sellers stop searching earlier than theoretically optimal. Inducing a mild form of time...

The Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) in the European Monetary Union shall deter countries from running excessive deficits by the threat of punishment, executed conditional on the outcome of a multistage voting procedure. We examine voting behaviour in an experiment which closely resembles the...

Field data on the strategic use of deficits to limit the budgetary scope of future governments are inconclusive about the effects of political polarization or a government's re-election probability on fiscal policy. Therefore, we designed a controlled experiment to examine the strategic use of...

We test for the influence of government strength and dispersion of power among the parties of coalition governments on the size of annual debt accumulation through budget deficits in OECD-countries from 1970 to 1999. Government strength and power dispersion in coalition governments are measured...

Myopic loss aversion (MLA) has been established as one prominent explanation for the equity premium puzzle. In this paper we address two issues related to the effects of MLA on risky investment decisions. First, we assess the relative impact of feedback frequency and investment flexibility (via...

We study household decision making in a high-stakes experiment with a random sample of households in rural China. Spouses have to choose between risky lotteries, first separately and then jointly. We find that spouses? individual risk preferences are more similar the richer the household and the...