In a controlled laboratory experiment, subjects had to fold letters in order to earn money. While the net income per letter was the same in the three treatments, the gross income varied and the tax rate was 0, 25% and 50%. Although work incentives should be the same in all treatments, subjects...

We use a laboratory experiment to study the extent to which investors’ choices are affected by limited loss deduction in income taxation. We first compare investment behavior in the no tax baseline to a tax control setting, in which the income from investments is taxed. We find that investors...

Income taxation may not only affect investment behavior by distorting payoffs, it may also have a more subtle, psychological effect, by biasing investors' perceptions of the financial consequences. In a laboratory experiment that allows us to vary the taxation method, while keeping the financial...

We conduct a framed field experiment with 245 employed persons (no students) as subjects and a real tax, which is levied on the subjects' income from working in our real effort task. In our first three treatments, the net wage is constant but gross wages are subject to different constant...

Entgegen den Annahmen der ökonomischen Standardtheorie zur Besteuerung stellen einige empirische Arbeiten fest, dass Individuen einer Steueraversion unterliegen. Unter dieser Form der Aversion wird in der Literatur die Bereitschaft verstanden, höhere Ausgaben zur Vermeidung von Steuern...

This note develops a behavioral explanation for the existence of an asymmetric tax treatment of gains and losses when investors are loss averse. We find that loss offset rules should be more restrictive for investors which are (1) more risk averse in case of gains, (2) less risk seeking in case...

This paper explores cultural differences in risky choices between Australian and German students. The purpose of this paper is to challenge the wide-spread view that investment in residential property in East Germany after unification has turned out to be a financial disaster in most cases by...

This paper puts three of the most prominent specifications of ‘other-regarding’ preferences to the experimental test, namely the theories developed by Charness and Rabin, by Fehr and Schmidt, and by Andreoni and Miller. In a series of experiments based on various dictator and prisoner’s...

Many of real-world public-goods are characterized by a marginal per capita return (MPCR) close to zero and have to be provided by large groups. Up until now, there is almost no evidence on how large groups facing a low MPCR behave in controlled public-good laboratory experiments involving...

We apply the Day Reconstruction Method to compare unemployed and employed people with respect to their subjective assessment of emotional affects, differences in the composition and duration of activities during the course of a day, and their self-reported life satisfaction. Employed persons are...