We study the effects of a label awarded to universities for excellence in research on students' perception of educational quality and enrolment in subsequent admission terms. Using a representative student survey we find that students evaluate the teaching and supervision quality of their...

Recent research suggests that altruism can be surprisingly tenuous; minor situational variations can turn altruism on and off. For example, if provided with sufficient cover, “reluctant altruists” will often avoid situations that compel them to give, and they may even secretly renege on...

Since the recent financial crisis, regulators and the general public have focused on financial speculation as one of its potential causes. In addition to the roles played by rating agencies and complicated financial engineering, speculative short sales have been put into question. However,...

We experimentally test whether electoral competition reduces shirking behavior by office-holders and increases citizens' trust. We hypothesize that competition increases campaign promises by office-holders, who feel committed to what they promise. Using a novel repeated multi-person...

This paper investigates the effect of different channels of communication on lying behavior. A simple coin flip game with four coin tosses is adapted in which subjects have monetary incentives to misreport their private information. The treatments differ with respect to the communication channel...

This study investigates whether individuals engage in prosocial behavior when it requires their time but not money. In a lab experiment with rigorous anonymity arrangements, subjects receive their payoff beforehand and can engage in a tedious task to increase the earnings of a passive recipient....

This paper investigates whether working under competitive or cooperative incentives affects deception in a subsequent, unrelated task. I use a laboratory study with two stages. First, participants work under a piece rate, tournament or team incentive in a real effort task. The second part...

This paper experimentally investigates into the effects of limited feedback on contributions in a repeated public goods game. We test whether feedback about good examples (i.e., the respective maximum contribution in a period) in contrast to bad examples (i.e., the minimum contributions) induces...

We propose a model for forecasting extreme electricity prices in real time (high frequency) settings. The unique feature of our model is its ability to forecast electricity price exceedances over very high thresholds, where only a few (if any) observations are available. The model can also be...

Recent discussions about rising inequality in industrialized countries have triggered calls for more government intervention and redistribution. Due to obvious behavioral effects caused by redistribution, it is however not clear whether redistributional policies are indeed able to combat...