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...

We study, theoretically and empirically, the effects of incentives on the self-selection and coordination of motivated agents to produce a social good. Agents join teams where they allocate effort to either generate individual monetary rewards (selfish effort) or contribute to the production of...

We conduct experimental games with police applicants in Germany to investigate whether intrinsically motivated agents self-select into public service. Our focus is on trustworthiness and the willingness to enforce norms as key dimensions of intrinsic motivation in the police context. We find...

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...

How does group identity affect belief formation? To address this question, we conduct a series of online experiments with a representative sample of individuals in the US. Using the setting of the 2020 US presidential election, we find evidence of intergroup preference across three distinct...

Centralized sanctioning institutions are of utmost importance for overcoming free-riding tendencies and enforcing outcomes that maximize group welfare in social dilemma situations. However, little is known about how such institutions come into existence. In this paper we investigate, both...

Team production is a frequent feature of modern organizations. Combined with team incentives, team production can create externalities among workers, since their utility upon accepting a contract depends on their team's performance and therefore on their colleagues' productivity. We study the...

We analyze distributional preferences in games in which a decider chooses the provision of a good that benefits a receiver and creates costs for a group of payers. The average decider takes into account the welfare of all parties and has concerns for efficiency. However, she attaches similar...