Transparency and accountability are often regarded as crucial for good governance and the efficient organization of public affairs. To systematically explore the impact of transparency and accountability on cooperation, we conduct a series of laboratory experiments on a variation of the public...

We provide experimental evidence on the emergence of redistributive societies. Individuals first vote on redistribution by feet and then learn their productivity and invest. We vary the individuals’ information about their productivities at the time when they choose a distribution rule and...

We provide experimental evidence on the emergence of redistributive societies. Individuals first vote on redistribution by feet and then learn their productivity and invest. We vary the individuals' information about their productivities at the time when they choose a distribution rule and find...

We ran a number of experiments among refugees and Germans.In a first step, we ask whether refugees and Germans behave differently and find that risk preferences do not significantly differ between them. However, refugees are less trusting than Germans. In a second step, we seek to identify the...

The civil war in Syria has been raging since 2011. We ask whether civil war experience affects voluntary cooperation and its coordination by means of peer punishment. To answer that question, we ran experiments with Syrians and Jordanians, and use a victimization index to measure the individual...

An unprecedented number of refugees from Syria has sought refuge in both the Middle East and Europe since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011. We analyze the level of altruism and risk-seeking among Syrian civil war victims in Jordan. We find systematic variations in their revealed...

We report the results of an experiment on norm violation, specifically lying, in a repeatedly played mind game with Syrian refugees in Jordan and in Germany. We compare their behavior with Jordanians, Germans, and Syrians who still live in Syria. The average number of lies is amazingly similar -...

We analyze possible links between both trust and trustworthiness among Syrian refugees in Germany in relation to the refugees' involvement in two different forms of social networking (forming bonding ties with other refugees vs. forming bridging ties between refugees and Germans). We implement...

Does the experience of civil war promote in-group bias among survivors? We try to answer this question by analyzing cooperation in a prisoner's dilemma game among Syrian refugees in two host countries, Germany and Jordan. We use a between-subjects analysis to test our in-group cooperation...