Precise knowledge about factors influencing the habitat suitability of a certain species forms the basis for the implementation of effective programs to conserve biological diversity. Such knowledge is frequently gathered from studies relating abundance data to a set of influential variables in...

Angesichts der wochenlangen Dürre in diesem Sommer stellt die Bundesregierung den besonders von Ernteausfällen betroffenen deutschen Landwirten Finanzhilfen in Höhe bis 170 Mio. Euro in Aussicht, falls sich die Bundesländer mit der gleichen Summe beteiligen. Nicht jeder sieht die Nothilfen,...

Ausgehend von einer zunehmenden Sensibilisierung der Bevölkerung für rechtsextremes Verhalten erarbeitete das Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungszentrum Berlin-Brandenburg e.V. SFZ) im Auftrag der Hans-Böckler-Stiftung eine Studie, die sich speziell mit Einstellungen zu rechtsextremen...

Loss aversion postulates that people prefer avoiding losses over acquiring gains of equal size. It is a central part of prospect theory and, according to Daniel Kahneman, "the most significant contribution of psychology to behavioral economics" (Kahneman, 2011, p. 300). It has powerful...

The public acceptability of a carbon price depends on how the revenues from carbon pricing are used. In a fully incentivised experiment with a large representative sample of the German population, we compare five different revenue recycling schemes and show that support for a carbon price is...

Reference-dependent preferences can explain several puzzling observations about organizational change. We introduce a dynamic model in which a loss-neutral firm bargains with loss-averse workers over organizational change and wages. We show that change is often stagnant or slow for long periods...

This paper offers a new explanation for the prevalent use of convertible securities in venture capital finance. Convertible securities can be used to endogenously allocate cash flow rights as a function of the realized quality of the project. This property can be used to mitigate the double...

We show that concerns for fairness may have dramatic consequences for the optimal provision of incentives in a moral hazard context. Incentive contracts that are optimal when there are only selfish actors become inferior when some agents are concerned about fairness. Conversely, contracts that...

Most economic models are based on the self-interest hypothesis that assumes that all people are exclusively motivated by their material self-interest. In recent years experimental economists have gathered overwhelming evidence that systematically refutes the self-interest hypothesis and suggests...

In recent decades, many firms offered more discretion to their employees, often increasing the productivity of effort but also leaving more opportunities for shirking. These "high-performance work systems" are difficult to understand in terms of standard moral hazard models. We show...