The reform introduced in Poland in 2009 substantially and abruptly reduced the number of workers eligible for early retirement. This paper evaluates the causal effects of this reform on labor force participation and exit to retirement. We use rich rotating panel from the Polish Labor Force...

In the theory of public enforcement of law the choice of the liability rules is between strict liability and fault-based liability. In this paper, we study the determinants of compliance when in addition to standard economic incentives wrongdoers take into account stigmatization costs. In this...

Status considerations with respect to consumption give rise to negative externalities because individuals do not take into account that their decisions affect the relative consumption position of others. Further, status concerns create incentives for excessive labour supply in competitive...

The tendency to underestimate others' relative performance compared to one's own is widespread among individuals in all work environments. We examine the relationship between, and the driving forces behind, individual overconfidence and voluntary cooperation in team production. Our experimental...

Do voters use ballot paper information on the personal characteristics of political candidates as cues in low-information elections? Using a unique dataset containing 4423 political candidates from recent elections in Germany, we show that candidates' occupations do play an important role in...

This paper examines a common explanation why participants of panel surveys may report declining life satisfaction over time. In line with the argument of developing trust relationships between interviewers and interviewees, the analysis reveals positive effects in reported life satisfaction when...

This paper investigates the finding that reported life satisfaction scores are significantly higher in the German Socio-Economic Panel when a third person is present during the interview. Even after controlling a variety of relevant factors, third person presence makes up a significant...

Fixed-term contracts are often considered a key policy tool for increasing employment. As we show that contract limitation lowers job satisfaction using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel study, we detect a drawback of promoting temporary employment that has not been identified so far. We...

Subjective well-being (SWB) is generally argued to rise with relative income. However, direct evidence is scarce on whether and how intensively individuals undertake income comparisons, to whom they relate, and what they perceive their relative income to be. In this paper, novel data with direct...

Laboratory experiments have documented substantial heterogeneity in social preferences, but little is known about the origins of such behavior. Previous research on public goods experiments suggests that individual-level demographic and psychological variables correlate with player types....