Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected pro-sociality among individuals? After the onset of the pandemic, many charitable appeals were updated to include a reference to COVID-19. Did donors increase their giving in response to such changes? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a...

Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected pro-sociality among individuals? After the onset of the pandemic, many charitable appeals were updated to include a reference to COVID-19. Did donors increase their giving in response to such changes? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a...

[Hintergrund] Familien sind das Grundgerüst unserer Gesellschaft. Die Corona-Pandemie hat daran nichts geändert - im Gegenteil. Corona hat nicht nur gezeigt, wie wichtig Familie für den Zusammenhalt im Privaten sein kann, sondern auch für den Zusammenhalt in der Gesellschaft. Gleichwohl hat...

Despite extensive literature on peer effects, the role of peers on personality skill development remains poorly understood. We fill this gap by investigating the effects of having disadvantaged primary school peers, generated by random classroom assignment and parental migration for employment....

Neid, Völlerei, Habgier, Wollust, Hochmut, Trägheit und Zorn - die sogenannten sieben Todsünden sind weitgehend bekannt und noch weiter verbreitet. Sie beschreiben sieben Motive und Verhaltensweisen, die viele Menschen im Alltag begleiten, aber zugleich als Vergehen moralisch gebrandmarkt...

Reporting private information is a key part of economic decision making. A recent literature has found that many people have a preference for honest reporting, contrary to usual economic assumptions. In this paper, we investigate whether preferences for honesty are malleable and what determines...

This paper studies the implications of agents signaling their moral type in a lying game. In the theoretical analysis, a signaling motive emerges where agents dislike being suspected of lying and where some types of liars are more stigmatized than others. The equilibrium prediction of the model...

We investigate whether revealing the identities in a public good game that includes a donation incentive leads to higher contributions to the public good. Previous evidence suggests that contributions to a public good increase significantly when these take place in public. Also, the amount of...

Reporting private information is a key part of economic decision making. A recent literature has found that many people have a preference for honest reporting, contrary to usual economic assumptions. In this paper, we investigate whether preferences for honesty are malleable and what determines...

Around the globe, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned daily live upside down since social distancing is probably the most effective means of containing the virus until herd immunity is reached. Social norms have been shown to be an important determinant of social distancing behaviors. By conducting...

There is a strong suggestion from the existing literature that volunteering improves the wellbeing of those who give up their time to help others, but much of it is correlational and not causal. In this paper, we estimate the wellbeing benefits from volunteering for England's National Health...

Despite extensive literature on peer effects, the role of peers on personality skill development remains poorly understood. We fill this gap by investigating the effects of having disadvantaged primary school peers, generated by random classroom assignment and parental migration for employment....

Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected pro-sociality among individuals? After the onset of the pandemic, many charitable appeals were updated to include a reference to COVID-19. Did donors increase their giving in response to such changes? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a...

Reporting private information is a key part of economic decision making. A recent literature has found that many people have a preference for honest reporting, contrary to usual economic assumptions. In this paper, we investigate whether preferences for honesty are malleable and what determines...

Bei der Bewertung von Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung der Corona-Pandemie muss zwingend zwischen Korrelation und Kausalität unterschieden werden. Ein simpler Abgleich des zeitlichen Verlaufs der Neuinfektionen mit dem zeitlichen Verlauf der Abwehrmaßnahmen ist unzureichend: Menschen passen in der...

In der Corona-Pandemie verzichten die Menschen auf das Händeschütteln. Könnte der medizinisch empfohlene Verzicht in Europa auch einen kulturellen Wandel einläuten?

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to significant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disavantaged children aged 12 to 24 months at baseline. We estimate the determinants of parents' material and time...

In our laboratory experiment, subjects, in sequence, have to predict the value of a good. The second subject in the sequence makes his prediction twice: first ("first belief"), after he observes his predecessor's prediction; second ("posterior belief"), after he observes his private signal. We...

Nicht nur aus gesundheitspolitischer Perspektive, sondern auch aus ökonomischer Sicht sollte die Lockerung der Anfang April 2020 in Deutschland existierenden Kontaktbeschränkungen zur Eindämmung der Covid-19-Pandemie auf keinen Fall übereilt erfolgen, sondern in gut vorbereiteten Schritten....

People frequently behave non-selfishly in situations where they can reduce their own payoff to help others. It is typically assumed that such pro-social behavior arises because people are motivated by a social preference. An alternative explanation is that they follow a social norm. We test with...

We study how shared experiences of political events can have a long-term effect on consumers' identity-driven brand choices, and how geopolitical conflicts can activate the effect. Our empirical strategy uses a generalized difference-in-differences design to exploit spatial variations in the...

We conduct two waves (W1 and W2) of an unincentivized online survey to measure the change in altruism of primary school students (N=983) toward classmates and schoolmates during the school closures due to COVID-19. The W1 responses arrived, on average, after 39 days of online education, while W2...

Hierarchies in social identities have been found to be integrally related to divergences in economic status. In India, caste is one such significant social identity where continued discriminatory practices towards the lower castes have resulted in poor outcomes for them. While there is...

We investigate the influence of self and social image concerns as potential sources of lying costs. In a standard die-rolling experiment, we exogenously manipulate self-awareness and observability, which mediate the focus of a person on their private and public selves, respectively. First, we...

This dissertation presents three independent essays that elicit social preferences in school children by using a combination of experimental measures and survey data. Chapter 2 consider the development of motivations for helping in informal risk-sharing networks from a sample of school children...

I present a novel experimental design to measure lying and mistrust as continuous variables on an individual level. My experiment is a sender-receiver game framed as an investment game. It features two players: firstly, an advisor with complete information (i.e., the sender) who is incentivized...

We examine the channels through which a randomized early childhood intervention in Colombia led to significant gains in cognitive and socio-emotional skills among a sample of disavantaged children aged 12 to 24 months at baseline. We estimate the determinants of parents' material and time...

Bei der Bewertung von Maßnahmen zur Eindämmung der Corona-Pandemie muss zwingend zwischen Korrelation und Kausalität unterschieden werden. Ein simpler Abgleich des zeitlichen Verlaufs der Neuinfektionen mit dem zeitlichen Verlauf der Abwehrmaßnahmen ist unzureichend: Menschen passen in der...