This paper reports results from a laboratory experiment on a continuous Japanese-English auction in a common-value 'wallet game'. The main objective is to test whether bidders follow the equilibrium bidding strategy predicted by theory. We find systematic deviations from equilibrium behaviour:...

This study evaluates a randomized trial in Côte d’Ivoire, implemented by the Africa Gender Innovation Lab (GIL), which tested whether varying the content and recipient of SMS reminders can increase enrollment among young people who had pre-registered for a skills training program. Messages...

A randomized experiment tested the effectiveness of individual and small group–based consulting services on firms in the Colombian auto parts industry, finding improvements in management and firm performance over three to four years. This paper uses administrative data to track these firms for...

This study tests the effects of large language model (LLM) decision support on patient care at two outpatient clinics in Nigeria. Health workers were given the option to make revisions to their initial care plan based on LLM feedback. The unassisted and assisted plans are evaluated using (1)...

Markets are often seen as impersonal mechanisms of exchange, yet many real-world transactions are deeply social. This paper examines how prosocial motives interact with economic exchange and how this affects market outcomes. I study these questions in the context of street vending - a ubiquitous...

Financial literacy is an important prerequisite for making informed financial decisions, but it remains low, especially among women and older people. Internalized stereotypes can undermine confidence and subsequently affect behavior in financial matters, leading to suboptimal decisions. This...

Behavioral design in smartphone apps aims at inducing certain, monetizable behavior, mainly increased engagement, measurable by usage time. Such design is rarely transparent and often restricts users' ability to make alternative choices. In a framed field experiment, we document that behavioral...

We test whether AI-generated news images affect outlet demand and trust. In a preregistered experiment with 2,870 UK adults, the same article was paired with a wireservice photo (with/without credit) or a matched AI image (with/without label). Average newsletter demand changes little. Ex-post...

We study how incarceration experience shapes preferences for criminal justice policies. In collaboration with a newly opened prison, we conducted a randomized field experiment that offered citizens the opportunity to experience up to two days of incarceration, closely replicating the real-life...

Switzerland features strong socio-economic segregation and no formal school choice, making residential relocation the only channel through which parents can access preferred schools. Identifying how parents value school attributes is therefore essential but challenging, given that choices bundle...

Population aging and the sustainability of retirement financing are critical challenges facing many developed economies. In South Korea, elderly poverty remains a critical issue, despite widespread homeownership among older adults. Although the home pension program allows retirees to unlock...

Negative word of mouth (NWoM) can be a major factor in new product diffusion, as indicated by Goldenberg et al. (2007). We extend their work by accounting for the role of consumer uncertainty for NWoM's impact on adoption dynamics. Using an agent-based simulation framework we compare three...

We examine how absolute and relative gains within reward schemes influence dishonesty. In our online experiment, we vary two payoff dimensions in a cheating mind game: the payoff level and the absolute payoff difference between being successful or not. A higher payoff level has a negative impact...

Advice plays a central role in health, personal finance, and energy-efficiency decisions. We study how a benevolent expert should design verifiable advice - such as whether to commission a diagnostic test of different accuracy - when the agent is behaviorally biased, either neglecting...

Opportunity costs are central to economic decision-making but often neglected. In a pre-registered experiment with 2,222 German university freshmen, one treatment provides salary information; another additionally frames it as the opportunity cost of delayed graduation. Only the opportunity cost...

This paper measures parents' beliefs about school and peer quality, how information about each affects school choices and student outcomes, and how social interactions mediate these effects. Parents underestimate school quality and overestimate peer quality. Crossrandomized school and peer...

Agency theory holds that managerial discretion over stakeholder decisions creates agency costs through altruistic redistribution. We test this claim in a principal-agent experiment where agents choose effort and transfers affecting a third party under unenforceable flat-wage contracts. We find...

We replicate Horváth (2025), experimentally studying link formation and effort in a linear-quadratic game with positive externalities. Across five treatments, subjects exert 38-97 percent more effort than the Nash benchmark yet create too few links, depressing payoffs. In groups of five, the...

Recent work in economics has developed survey-based measures of economic preferences that are "experimentally" or "behaviorally validated." We scrutinize this approach focusing on the Global Preference Survey (Falk et al., 2018, 2023). Replicating their behavioral validation on almost 2,000...

Households often struggle to understand policy interventions, limiting the effectiveness of policy transmission. We study how economic policy signals reach and influence households, focusing on the role of professional economists as interpretive intermediaries. When policy signals are complex...

Academic freedom has come under growing strain across the world. To study whether and how academics react to political pressure, we exploit a natural experiment: the U.S. government's ''blacklist'' of undesirable words released in early 2025. We find that the release of this list leads to a...

Democratic societies depend on citizens following rules even when those rules are set by political opponents. Rising polarization may threaten this behavior. We test the impact of polarization on rule compliance in the United States across three pre-registered waves (May and November 2024; April 2025; n...

This paper provides clear evidence that concerns for basic needs satisfaction (BNS) represent a distinct distributional motive. Using a unified theoretical and experimental framework across five dictator-game experiments in Germany and Georgia (N=446), we disentangle BNS from motives such as...

We study how incarceration experience shapes preferences for criminal justice policies. In collaboration with a newly opened prison, we conducted a randomized field experiment that o!ered citizens the opportunity to experience up to two days of incarceration, closely replicating the real-life...

We conduct an artefactual field experiment in real-existing trade networks to analyze how individual network degree affects bargaining demands and outcomes. We combine data from a bilateral bargaining experiment with data of trade networks in 24 villages in Uganda. To identify the effect of...

This paper analyzes the causal effect of exposure to uncensored environmental reporting on individuals' environmental preferences and pro-environmental behavior. We exploit a natural experiment occurring in the German Democratic Republic, where geographic characteristics determined access to...

We study how individuals' views on current and future levels of income inequality change during periods of expansionary fiscal policy. In a randomized controlled trial (RCT), we provide information on fiscal expansion to a representative sample of the German population. Our findings reveal that...

We examine the impact of monetary and non-monetary incentives, individually and combined, on residential electricity consumption. A field experiment in Switzerland provided all participants with access to a custom-developed app offering feedback on electricity use and energy-saving tips. In...

We measure which economic topics are top of mind using quarterly German household and firm panels from 2020 to 2024, a period that spans the post-pandemic inflation surge and the subsequent disinflation. With these data, we study the determinants and consequences of having inflation top of mind....