The research on private financial transfers between generations lacks a longitudinal perspective. Gifts as intergenerational transfers inter vivos allow us to study the importance of life course events for the chances of receiving transfers. In Germany, gifts are highly private and leave more...

This research investigates how family events in adult children’s lives influence the timing of their parents’ financial transfers. We draw on retrospective data collected by the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) and use event history models to study the effects of marriage, divorce,...

Recently, it has been argued that the evidence in social science research suggests that deceiving subjects in an experiment does not lead to a significant loss of experimental control. Based on this assessment, experimental economists were counseled to lift their de facto prohibition against...

Recently, it has been argued that the evidence in social science research suggests that deceiving subjects in an experiment does not lead to a significant loss of experimental control. Based on this assessment, experimental economists were counseled to lift their de facto prohibition against...

Thaler and Sunstein (2008) advance the concept of "nudge" policies -- non-regulatory and non-fiscal mechanisms designed to enlist people's cognitive biases so as to achieve the desired policy ends. A core assumption is that policy makers engage biases to advance the interests of the nudged...

Behavioral economists have done a great service in connecting psychology and economics. Up to now, however, most have focused on cognitive illusions and anomalies, in order to prove the descriptive failure of neoclassical economic models. The key problems in the cognitive illusions literature...