This article outlines a model of how social interactions among persons belonging to the same region might influence the individual unemployment duration. The impact is assumed to be enhanced through social work norms shared by peers within the group. Building on a range of German data sets and...

This paper studies whether conformism behavior affects individual outcomes in crime. We present a social network model of peer effects with ex-ante heterogeneous agents and show how conformism and deterrence affect criminal activities. We then bring the model to the data by using a very detailed...

Recent literature has found that individuals holding a greener self-image display higher levels of life satisfaction. We extend the single-country setting of that research to a transnational perspective and explore whether a relationship exists between green self-image (GSI) and life...

Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel from 1984-2009, we follow persons from their working life into their retirement years and find that, on average, employed people maintain their life satisfaction upon retirement, while long-term unemployed people report a substantial increase in...

Unemployed individuals may regain identity utility through coping strategies, which however vary with age and gender. Using highly detailed German county level data, we test whether the social norm effect of unemployment is age-dependent. The wellbeing differential between the unemployed and the...

The term greed has become very popular in the public debate. It is regularly argued, for instance, that greed is one of the deep rooted reasons for the financial crisis, numerous incidents of fraud and growing inequalities in wealth. Despite its prominent role in the current debates, however,...

This paper studies how imposing norms on contribution behavior affects individuals' intrinsic motivation. We consider the church levy, which the Catholic Church in Germany collects as a charitable donation, despite the fact that the levy is legally a tax. We design a randomized field experiment...