A large fraction of households have very little savings buffer and are therefore vulnerable to financial shocks. This paper examines whether a social norm nudge can induce such households to save more. We ran a large-scale field experiment at a retail bank in the Netherlands. We find that...

We ran a field experiment at a large Dutch school for intermediate vocational education to examine whether the response of teachers to student feedback depends on the content of the feedback. Students evaluated all teachers, but only a randomly selected group of teachers received feedback....

This paper develops a simple economic model to examine how leadership styles in organizations depend on the prevailing wage-setting conditions for workers. In particular, we examine a leader who can - in addition to the use of monetary incentives - motivate a worker by adopting leadership styles...

We analyze a simple model of local public good provision in a region comprising two districts, a city and a village. When districts remain autonomous and local public goods have positive spillover effects on the neighboring district, there is underprovision of public goods in both the city and...

Does the wish to convince others lead people to persuade themselves about the moral and factual superiority of their position? We investigate this question in the context of two international debating competitions, where persuasion goals (pro or contra a motion) are randomly assigned to debaters...

Policy makers put great emphasis on the role of information about carbon emissions in achieving sustainable decisions by consumers. We conduct two studies to understand the optimal targeting of such information and its effects. First, we conduct an incentivized and representative survey among US...

Self-signaling theory argues that individuals partly behave prosocially to create or uphold a favorable self-image. To study self-signaling theory, we investigate whether increasing self-image concerns affects charitable giving. In our experiment subjects divide 20 euros between themselves and a...

Does the wish to convince others lead people to persuade themselves about the moral and factual superiority of their position? We investigate this question in the context of two international debating competitions, where persuasion goals (pro or contra a motion) are randomly assigned to debaters...

Should education be subsidized for the purpose of redistribution? The usual argument against subsidies to education above the primary level is that the rich take up most education, so a subsidy would increase inequality. We show that there is a counteracting effect: an increase in the stock of...

This paper explores the meaning and implications of the desire by workers for impact. We find that this impact motive can make firms in a competitive labor market act as monopsonists, lead workers with the same characteristics but at different firms to earn different wages, may alleviate the...