Do competitive markets remove the impact of social norms and customs on market out-comes? Or are these social forces capable of exerting a persistent influence? Many economists seem to believe that social norms and customs have, if at all, only temporary effects in competitive markets. So far...

We experimentally investigate whether individuals can reliably detect cooperators (the nice(r) people) in an anonymous decision environment involving “connected games.†Participants can condition their choices in an asymmetric prisoners’ dilemma and a trust game on past...

Buying a good on a loan entails numerous consumption and payment episodes. Loan users can either mentally integrate or separate these episodes. In order to identify the actual mental structures, we conducted 29 semi-structured interviews with current and prospective loan users. A content...

Dynamics of compliance, depending on audit probability, sanctions, and the time lag between audits, are investigated in a tax experiment. Compliance varied significantly over time: it decreased immediately after an audit and increased afterwards, especially if audits were frequent and sanctions...

The results of an asset market experiment, in which 64 subjects trade two assets on eight markets in a computerized continuous double auction, indicate that objectively irrelevant information influences trading behavior. Moreover, positively and negatively framed information leads to a...

Although from an economic point of view, legal considerations apart, tax avoidance, tax evasion and tax flight have similar effects, namely a reduction of revenue yields, and are based on the same desire to reduce the tax burden, it is likely that individuals perceive them as different and as...

Paying taxes can be considered a contribution to the welfare of a society. But even though tax payments are redistributed to citizens in the form of public goods and services, taxpayers often do not perceive many benefits from paying taxes. Information campaigns about the use of taxes for...