Smartphone app designers often use behavioral design to influence users, increase sales, and boost advertising revenue. Behavioral design relies on elements ranging from app appearance to black-box algorithms and personalization. It commonly exploits behavioral biases, such as the lack of...

I estimate permanent and transitory tax-price and income elasticity of charitable giving in Germany using a rich panel data of tax return for the years 2001-2006. Income tax reforms were implemented in 2004 and 2005. The results suggest that the permanent tax-price elasticity varies...

Nudging hat das Potential, soziales Engagement zu erhöhen. In diesem Beitrag wird ausgehend von einigen Feldexperimenten diskutiert, wie vorgegebene Standards, Anker, Erinnerungen und weitere Methoden des Nudgings die Entscheidung, Geld für wohltätige Zwecke zu spenden, verändern können. So...

How do the media affect public support for democratic institutions in a fragile democracy? What role do they play in a dictatorial regime? We study these questions in the context of Germany of the 1920s and 1930s. During the democratic period, when the Weimar government introduced pro-government...

Is there a way of matching donations that avoids crowding out? We introduce a novel matching method where the matched amount is allocated to a different project, present some simple theoretical considerations that predict reduced crowding out or more crowding in (depending on the degree of...

Do donors examine a single ask to donate in isolation or do they consider that other and future asks may come along? In the first year of our field experiment, we vary whether or not potential donors are informed that the ask will be repeated in the following year. This information has dramatic...

Using a sample of Europeans aged 50+ from twelve countries in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) we analyse the role of poor material conditions as a determinant of changes in health over a four-year period. We find that poverty defined with respect to relative incomes...