Using a laboratory experiment, we examine whether informal monetary sanctions can lead to better coordination in a repeated minimum effort coordination game. While most groups first experience inefficient coordination, the efficiency increases substantially after introducing an ex post...

We study the relation between people's personal values and environmentally friendly consumption behavior. We first assessed subjects' personal values using the Aspiration Index. Then subjects participated in a laboratory supermarket offering organic and conventional food products and different...

The higher our aspirations, the higher the probability that we have to adjust them downwards when forming more realistic expectations later on. This paper shows that the costs induced by high aspirations are not trivial. We first develop a theoretical framework to identify the factors that...

Private banks often blame state guarantees to distort competition by giving public banks the advantage of lower funding costs. In this paper I show that if borrowers perceive the public bank as supporting economic development, private banks may be able to separate firms by self selection, enter...

The paper introduces the concept of adjustment utility, that is, referencedependent utility from expectations. It offers an explanation for observed preferences that cannot be explained with existing models, and yields new predictions for individual decision making. The model gives a simple...

In economic theory, utility depends on past, present and future outcomes. The experiment described in this paper suggests that utility also depends on people's attitudes, and that it can easily be manipulated through these attitudes. The results imply, first, that purely outcome-based models of...

Die Dissertation besteht aus drei Kapiteln. Im ersten Kapitel wird unter der Bezeichnung “Adjustment Utility” eine neue Komponente individuellen Nutzens eingeführt. Mit einem Experiment, daß ich mit Studenten durchgeführt habe, zeige ich erst, daß diese Nutzenkomponente existiert. Dann...

Restricted access to finance is often stated as one of the main obstaclesto the development of the SME sector in Russia. In this paper, wepropose a new lending strategy that allows private banks to profitablyincrease financing of this sector in spite of being at a disadvantagecompared to the...

Experimental and empirical evidence shows that the utility an individual derives from a certain state depends on the reference state she compares it to. According to economic theory, the reference state is determined by past, present and future outcomes of either the individual herself or her...