Recent research has shed light on the effect of cognitive ability on economic decision-making. By measuring cognitive ability using Raven's progressive matrix test, we investigate this effect on human behavior in two types of experimental ultimatum games. We obtain two significant results....

We conduct a modified dictator game in order to analyze the role self-image concerns play in other-regarding behavior. While we generally follow Konow (2000), a cognitive dissonance-based model of other-regarding behavior in dictator games, we relax one of its assumptions as we allow for...

Outcomes and strategies shown in control questions prior to experimental play may provide subjects with anchors or induce experimenter demand effects. In a Cournot oligopoly experiment we explore whether control questions influence subjects' choices in initial periods and over the course of a...

To identify dual-process reasoning in giving, we exposed experimental participants making a charitable donation to vivid images of the charity’s beneficiaries in order to stimulate affect. We hypothesized that the effect of an affective manipulation on giving would be larger when we...

In a variety of recent papers, it is shown that individuals do not take taxes correctly into account, which results in distorted or unexpected investment behavior. We shed further light on the discussion of such behavioral tax perception biases by analyzing intrinsic and extrinsic effects on...

Can differences in cognitive reflection explain other-regarding behavior? To test this, I use the three-item Cognitive Reflection Task to classify individuals as intuitive or reflective and correlate this measure with choices in three games that each subject participates in. The main sample...

Behavioral economics characterizes decision-makers using psychologically-informed models. Cognitive science produces psychologically-informed models. Why don't these disciplines talk more? Here, the author presents several arguments for why cognitive science should inform behavioral economics -...

Behavioral economics aspires to replace the agents of neoclassical economics with living, breathing human beings. Here, the author argues that behavioral economics, like its neoclassical counterpart, often neglects the role of active sense-making that motivates and guides much human behavior....

In this thesis I present three essays in which the influence of heuristics on individual decision making is analyzed and two essays dealing with behavioral aspects of moral costs. In chapter two, we investigate the effect a traders’ decision can have on the disposition effect heuristic when...

We investigate how cognitive ability and age affect giving behavior in single-blind dictator game experiments with a sample comprising 514 non-student participants in Japan. First, we found a negative correlation between cognitive ability and giving behavior. Focusing on dictators with medium or...