Redistribution is an inevitable feature of collective pension schemes and economic experiments have revealed that most people have a preference for redistribution that is not merely inspired by self-interest. Interestingly, little is known on how these preferences interact with preferences for...

Does adverse selection hamper the effectiveness of voluntary risk sharing? How do differences in risk profiles affect adverse selection? We experimentally investigate individuals ́willingness to share risks with others. Across treatments we vary how risk profiles differ between individuals. We...

Experimental and behavioral economics are well established branches in the economic science. This essay presents and discusses some results and behavioral regularities from these fields which are of potential importance for public policy. After a brief introduction of what experimental and...

More often than not production processes are the joint endeavor of people having different abilities and productivities. Such production processes and the associated surplus production are often not fully transparent in the sense that the relative contributions of involved agents are blurred;...

In a series of experiments conducted in Belgium (Wallonia and Flanders), France and the Netherlands, we compare behavior regarding tax evasion and welfare dodging, with and without information about others' behavior. Subjects have to decide between a 'registered' income, the realization of which...

An important element for the public support of policies is their perceived justice. At the same time most policy choices have uncertain outcomes. We report the results of a first experiment investigating just allocations of resources when some recipients are exposed to uncertainty. Although,...

This paper explores whether social preferences influence portfolio choices of retail investors. We use administrative investor trading records which we link to decisions of the same investors in experiments with real money at stake. We show that social preferences rather than return expectations...

To accurately predict behavior economists need reliable measures of individual time preferences and attitudes toward risk and typically need to assume stability of these characteristics over time and across decision domains. We test the reliability of two choice tasks for eliciting discount...

Response time is increasingly used to shed light on the process by which individuals make decisions. As mistakes may be correlated with response time it could, however, be misleading to use this measure to draw inference on preferences. To demonstrate we build on a recent literature, which uses...

We explore network effects on generosity for different network dimensions. To this end we elicit multiple network dimensions (friendship, social support, economic exchange, etc.) in a rural village in the Southern hemisphere and measure generosity with a sequence of dictator games conducted in...