We experimentally test whether electoral competition reduces shirking behavior by office-holders and increases citizens' trust. We hypothesize that competition increases campaign promises by office-holders, who feel committed to what they promise. Using a novel repeated multi-person...

This paper investigates the effect of different channels of communication on lying behavior. A simple coin flip game with four coin tosses is adapted in which subjects have monetary incentives to misreport their private information. The treatments differ with respect to the communication channel...

This study investigates whether individuals engage in prosocial behavior when it requires their time but not money. In a lab experiment with rigorous anonymity arrangements, subjects receive their payoff beforehand and can engage in a tedious task to increase the earnings of a passive recipient....

This paper tests whether staying ignorant about the negative consequences of one's own actions affects agents' performance in a real effort experiment. We conducted treatments in which subjects' effort either increased only one's own payoff or also increased the donation to a bad charity....

We study the effects of a label awarded to universities for excellence in research on students' perception of educational quality and enrolment in subsequent admission terms. Using a representative student survey we find that students evaluate the teaching and supervision quality of their...

This paper investigates whether working under competitive or cooperative incentives affects deception in a subsequent, unrelated task. I use a laboratory study with two stages. First, participants work under a piece rate, tournament or team incentive in a real effort task. The second part...

In this article we develop a taxonomy of behavioral policy measures proposed by Thaler and Sunstein (2008). Based on this taxonomy, we discuss the ethical legitimacy of these measures. First, we explain two common reservations against nudges (choice architecture) rooted in utilitarian and...

This paper experimentally investigates into the effects of limited feedback on contributions in a repeated public goods game. We test whether feedback about good examples (i.e., the respective maximum contribution in a period) in contrast to bad examples (i.e., the minimum contributions) induces...

Since governmental transparency is considered to be a key mechanism for democratic accountability and representation, we compare three analytically distinctive motivations that could potentially explain transparency support among political elites: (1) From a principal-agent perspective, elites...

We investigate strategic interactions of Israelis and Palestinians within a controlled laboratory experiment. In our first treatment we retrieve cooperation benchmarks prevailing within both subject pools. Then we measure cooperation levels and associated beliefs between Israelis and...