I investigate whether two mechanisms leading to biased beliefs about success, overconfidence and competition neglect, influence decisions to enter competitive environments. I use a controlled laboratory setting that allows to elicit belief distributions related to absolute as well as relative...

We study belief updating about relative performance in an ego-relevant task. Manipulating the perceived ego-relevance of the task, we show that subjects update their beliefs optimistically because they derive direct utility flows from holding positive beliefs. This finding provides a behavioral...

We investigate heterogeneity in patterns of preferences for health insurance features using choice data from a controlled laboratory experiment. Participants make consecutive insurance choices based on choice sets that vary in composition and size. In addition, we implement a treatment that...

We use a laboratory experiment to understand the channels through which honesty oaths can affect behavior and credibility. Using a game with asymmetric information in a financial market setting that captures some important features of advisor-investor interactions, we manipulate the common...

We investigate heterogeneity in patterns of preferences for health insurance features using health insurance choice data from a controlled laboratory experiment. Within the experiment, participants make consecutive insurance choices based on choice sets that vary in composition and size. We keep...

Subjects in economic experiments often behave altruistically. This is interpreted as reflecting a concern for equitable monetary outcomes. We show that a considerable proportion of such fair behavior may not be driven by a desire to implement equitable outcomes. To do so, we first demonstrate a...

Procrastination is often attributed to time-inconsistent preferences but may also arise when individuals derive anticipatory utility from holding optimistic beliefs about their future effort costs. This study provides a rigorous empirical test for this notion of ‘motivated procrastination’....

Access to morally relevant information could lead to behavioral change, but only if individuals attend to such information. We investigate this issue in the context of food choices, where the consumption of meat from intensive farming negatively affects animal welfare. Based on a pre-registered...

Travel demand emerges from individual decisions. These decisions, depending on individual objectives, preferences, experiences and spatial knowledge about travel, are both heterogeneous and evolutionary. Research emerging from fields such as road pricing and ATIS requires travel demand models...