Extensive field evidence shows individuals’ decisions in settings involving choiceunder uncertainty (e.g. savings and investment choices) depend on the decisions of their peers.One hypothesized cause of peer group effects is social interaction effects: an individual’s utilityfrom an action...

Moderne Evaluationsmethoden auf der Basis ökonometrischer Verfahren und randomisierter Feldexperimente machen es für immer mehr Politikbereiche möglich, die Wirksamkeit wirtschaftspolitischer Maßnahmen zu überprüfen. Gleichwohl sind diese Methoden in der deutschen Evaluationspraxis nicht...

Moderne Evaluationsmethoden auf der Basis ökonometrischer Verfahren und randomisierter Feldexperimente machen es für immer mehr Politikbereiche möglich, die Wirksamkeit wirtschaftspolitischer Maßnahmen zu überprüfen. Gleichwohl sind diese Methoden in der deutschen Evaluationspraxis nicht...

Previous research indicates that risky and uncertain marginal returnsfrom the public good significantly lower contributions. This paper presentsexperimental results illustrating that the effects of risk and uncertainty dependon the employed parameterization. Specifically, if the value of the...

The measurement of social norms plays a pivotal role in many social sciences.While economists predominantly conduct experiments, sociologistsrather employ (factorial) surveys. Both methods, however, suer from distinctweaknesses. Experiments, on the one hand, often fall short in themeasurement of...

Die menschliche Art ist eine Spezies, die durch Einsatz von Institutionen undNormensystemen kollektive Güter (oder Übel) bereitzustellen vermag.1 Kollektive Güterbilden typischerweise Antworten auf Kollektivgut-Probleme. Eine besonders wichtige Klassesolcher Kollektivgut-Probleme entsteht im...

During the last three decades the ascent of behavioral economics clearly helped tobring down artificial disciplinary boundaries between psychology and economics.Noting that behavioral economics seems still under the spell of the rational choicetradition – and, indirectly, of behaviorism – we...

Which inequalities among individuals are considered unjust? This paper reportsthe results of an experiment designed to study distributive choices dealing with arbitrarilyunequal initial endowments. In a three-person distribution problem wheresubjects either know or do not know their endowments,...

Relying on the specific example of ultimatum bargaining experiments this paperexplores the possible role of empirical knowledge of behavioural “norm(ative)facts” within the search for (W)RE – (Wide) Reflective Equilibria on normativeissues. Assuming that “pro-social” behaviour...

In the framework of expected utility theory, risk attitudes are entirely capturedby the curvature of the utility function. In cumulative prospect theory (CPT) riskattitudes have an additional dimension: the weighting of probabilities. With thismodication, one question arises naturally: since...