On average young people "undersave" whereas old people "oversave" with respect to the rational expectations model of life-cycle consumption and savings. According to numerous studies on subjective survival beliefs, young people also "underestimate" whereas old people "overestimate" their...

This paper estimates the percentage of students who do not take up their federal need-based student financial aid entitlements and sheds light on determinants of this behavior. Against the background that educational mobility in Germany is low although extensive student financial aid for needy...

For most people, buying a home is their single largest financial commitment. Previous research shows that Chinese buyers pay less for homes with unlucky addresses and more for homes with lucky addresses. Using Singapore data on housing transactions combined with a plethora of individual buyer...

We investigate the role of intentions in two-player two-stage games. For this purpose we systematically vary the set of opportunity sets the first mover can chose from and study how the second mover reacts not only to opportunities of gains but also of losses created by the choice of the first...

This paper estimates the percentage of students who do not take up their federal need-based student financial aid entitlements and sheds light on determinants of this behavior. Against the background that educational mobility in Germany is low although extensive student financial aid for needy...

Social norms permeate society across a wide range of issues and are important to understanding how societies function. In this paper we concentrate on 'bad' social norms - those that are inefficient or even damaging to a group. This paper explains how bad social norms evolve and persist; our...

Inadequate application of nitrogen (N) fertilizer has been identified by the Food Staples Sufficiency Program as a major constraint in achieving rice self-sufficiency. The available literature on fertilizer application in the Philippines tends to find inadequate N application under the agronomic...

Implicit discount rates (IDRs) are employed in energy models to capture household investment decisions, yet the factors behind the IDR and their respective implications for policy-making usually remain blurred and fractional. The proposed comprehensive framework distinguishes three broad...

Partnering with a savings product provider in Kenya, we tested the extent to which behavioral interventions and financial incentives can increase the saving rate of individuals with low and irregular income. Our experiment lasted for six months and included a total of twelve conditions. The...

The consequences of many economic decisions only materialize in the future. To make informed choices in such decision problems, consumers need to anticipate the likelihood of future states of the world, the state-dependence of their preferences, and the choice alternatives that may become...

This paper analyzes 12,596 wagering decisions of 6,064 contestants in the US game show Jeopardy!, focusing on the anchoring phenomenon in financial decision-making. We find that contestants anchor heavily on the initial dollar value of a clue in their wagering decision, even though there exists...

This survey paper discusses the links between (1) research done by Amartya K. Sen on the social rate of discount and (2) behavioural economics studies on intertemporal and interpersonal choice. Sen's idea on the need to differentiate social rate of discount allowed to pave the way further...

Recent evidence suggests that default based nudges i.e. alterations in the decisional context, can have large effects on decision making and can be used as policy interventions to improve individual and public welfare. This paper presents the results of a controlled experiment (N = 988),...

Purpose - This paper addresses a criticism of coaching that is rather overlooked in the respective literature but highly discussed among clients. It is often claimed that coaching is nothing more than a chat among friends or colleagues and has, therefore, no added value for a potential customer....

In this study we test predictions from Unconscious Thought Theory (UTT) that unconscious thought will lead to better decision making in complex decision tasks relative to conscious thought. Different from prior work testing this prediction, we use a method of manipulating conscious and...

Strategic decisions are affected by beliefs about the expectations of others and their possible decisions. Thus, strategic decisions are influenced by the social context and by beliefs about other actors’ levels of sophistication. The present study investigated whether strategic...

Over two days in February 1988, several key experimental economists and cognitive psychologists met to explore the possibilities of joint research promoted by the Sloan and Russell Sage Foundations under the rubric behavioral economics. The original vision that the meeting could open a line of...

This paper conducts a systematic comparison of behavioral economics's challenges to the standard accounts of economic behaviors within three dimensions: under risk, over time and regarding other people. A new perspective on two underlying methodological issues, i.e., interdisciplinarity and the...

This paper conducts a systematic comparison of behavioral economics’s challenges to the standard accounts of economic behaviors within three dimensions: under risk, over time and regarding other people. A new perspective on two underlying methodological issues, i.e., interdisciplinarity and...

Credence goods markets suffer from inefficiencies caused by superior information of sellers about the surplus-maximizing quality. While standard theory predicts that equal mark-up prices solve the credence goods problem if customers can verify the quality received, experimental evidence...

I study how different types of subsidization affect investment decisions in a laboratory experiment. Even though the expected pro t is identical in all treatments, I find highly significant differences between them. In particular, when investment alternatives get subsidized with tax credits the...

The behavioral relevance of non-binding defaults is well established. While most research has focused on decision makers’ responses to a given default, we argue that this individual decision making perspective is incomplete. Instead, a comprehensive understanding of default effects requires to...

Empirical evidence supports the conventional wisdom that entrepreneurs are more optimistic and overconfident than others. However, the same holds true for top managers. In this lab-in-the-field experiment we directly compare the scores of entrepreneurs, managers and employees on a comprehensive...

This comment on Alan Sykes Article "Economic 'Necessity' in International Law" on AJIL UNBOUND discusses the application of necessity clauses from an economic perspective especially in light of the incentives of investors, who are the third party beneficiaries of the investment treaty/contract....

Looming disasters mostly require collective action but international law is traditionally consent based. For a state to be bound by international law, it needs to have ratified a treaty (e.g. concerning climate change) or must be bound by customary international law. This horizontal form of...

On average young people "undersave" whereas old people "oversave" with respect to the rational expectations model of life-cycle consumption and savings. According to numerous studies on subjective survival beliefs, young people also "underestimate" whereas old people "overestimate" their...

2016 jährte sich das Erscheinen des Artikels von John Maurice Clark mit dem in der Überschrift genannten Titel im Journal of Political Economy zum hundertsten Mal. Clark legt in diesem Artikel seine Vorstellungen zur Entwicklung einer "economics of responsibility" und zur Wahrnehmung von...

Labels signaling sustainable product attributes are gaining importance, although uncertainty concerning the environmental, micro- and macroeconomic benefits of such labels persist. One of the questions still incom-pletely answered is whether Willingness To Pay (WTP) varies with a gradually...

The authors identify three challenges to global cooperation and propose three solutions. The first is the lack of integration of civil society into global governance. In the spirit of Ostrom's poly-centric governance, they propose stronger interaction between public international authorities,...

In the course of experiential computing privacy is entering personal space. Due to the implementation of all kinds of sensors and computing in everyday life of users, their privacy is at high risk. The high risk of privacy is strengthened by the classification of mobile app download decisions in...

One important pillar in the debate about energy-saving measures addresses energy conservation. In this paper, we focus on the deployment of advanced metering infrastructure to reduce the impact of limited information and bounded rationality of consumers. For California, we empirically analyze...

Explaining how political institutions shape human behavior is one of the big challenges of social sciences. This thesis uses game theory, behavioral economics and the tools of experimental economics to study two topics in particular: information aggregation and legitimacy of institutions. While...

Pension economics has traditionally guided pension policy with the help of formal models based on individuals who think in a life cycle context with perfect foresight, full information, and in a time-consistent manner. This paper sheds light on selected aspects of pension economics when these...

In dieser Studie wird eine Auswahl an zentralen Denkfehlern bei der Geldanlage dargestellt, die aufgrund von begrenzt rationalem Verhalten getroffen werden. Auf Basis aktueller Studien aus der Verhaltensökonomik wird erklärt, wieso sich Anleger häufig falsch verhalten und was sie dagegen tun...