Quotas for special groups of students often apply in school or university admission procedures. This paper studies the performance of two mechanisms to implement such quotas in a lab experiment. The first mechanism is a simplified version of the mechanism currently employed by the German central...

This paper studies how imposing norms on contribution behavior affects individuals’ intrinsic motivation. We consider the church levy, which the Catholic Church in Germany collects as a charitable donation, despite the fact that the levy is legally a tax. We design a randomized field...

We study whether individuals in a face-to-face situation can successfully exert some lying effort to delude others. We exploit data from a laboratory experiment in which participants were asked to assess videotaped statements as being rather truthful or untruthful. The statements are...

We empirically investigate the possibility that a decision maker prefers to avoid making a decision and instead delegates it to an external device, e.g., a coin flip. A large data set from the centralized clearinghouse for university admissions in Germany shows a choice pattern of applicants...

Using a ¯rm-level panel data set I assess whether dynamic models of in-vestment provide an empirically fruitful framework for analyzing tax e®ectson changes in capital stock. In particular I estimate a one-step error correc-tion model (ECM) complementing the usual estimation of a distributed...

We investigate the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse foruniversity admissions (ZVS) in medicine and related subjects. This mechanism consists ofthree procedures based on final grades from school ("Abiturbestenverfahren","Auswahlverfahren der Hochschulen") and on waiting...

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...

We investigate the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse for university admissions (ZVS) in medicine and related subjects. This mechanism consists of three procedures based on final grades from school (“Abiturbestenverfahren”, “Auswahlverfahren der Hochschulen”) and on...

In Germany, the tax loss carry-forward of corporations significantly increased over the lastdecade. At the same time only a small percentage of losses have been effectively offset. Onepotential reason for this puzzle is that stricter loss offset restrictions have been introduced inrecent years....

The higher our aspirations, the higher the probability that we have toadjust 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...