Individuals differ in behavior since neither their ethical constraints, their attitudes towards risk, nor their analytical talents are the same. In an experimental prephase we tried to elicit such differences by confronting participants with suitable one-person-decision problems. In the main...

In this paper I consider a complex decision problem where subjects have to cope with a time horizon of uncertain duration and must update their termination probabilities which depend on stochastic events during "life". First I describe how economic theory suggests to solve the decision problem....

Retributive responses do play a role in human behavior. Whether they are primarily triggered by supposed intentions or by observed consequences of actions is an important question. It can be addressed by experimental studies of retributive responses in situations in which the individual actor...

When people decide about saving and consumption across the various periods of their life time they take into account their life expectancy when comparing present and future needs and resources for satisfying them. The experimental design, applied at two sites (Humboldt-University at Berlin and...

The endowment effect describes the fact that people demand much more to give up an object than they are willing to spend to acquire it. The existence of this effect has been documented in numerous experiments. We attempt to explain this effect by showing that evolution favors individuals whose...