In a ¯rst attempt to apply the global games methodology to signalling games, Ewerhart and Wichardt (2004) analyse a beer-quiche type signalling game with additional imperfect information about the preferences of the receiver. Their approach allows them to dismiss the unreasonable pool- ing on...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of how far costly transfers of economic benefits to others, often understood in economics as instances of (behavioural) altruism, can be motivated by individual group status concerns, i.e. without the common reference to...

This paper proposes a simple framework to model social preferences in a game theoretic framework which explicitly separates economic incentives from social (context) effects. It is argued that such a perspective makes it easier to analyse contextual effects. Moreover, the framework is used to...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the question of how far costly transfers of economic benefits to others, often understood in economics as instances of (behavioural) altruism, can be motivated by individual group status concerns, i.e. without the common reference to...

Purpose – The paper emphasises the general relevance of social norms and social associations for cooperative behaviour in less or non‐social economic contexts, focusing in particular on economic laboratory experiments, and to illustrate the underlying psychological driving forces....

Financial decision making requires a sound handling of chance events. However, various studies have suggested that people are prone to illusion of control, i.e., the belief that prospects of a chancy event are better if they are involved in the randomisation process. This paper reports results...

Establishing causal relationships is a core aspect of empirical economics. Borrowing ideas from the medical sciences, we propose tentative guidelines for reliable causal inferences that cover aspects related to both the study itself and its fit with the existing background knowledge. We argue...