infonet-economy

To fully understand the motives for delegating a decision right, it is important to study responsibility attributions for outcomes of delegated decisions. We conducted laboratory experiments in which subjects could either choose a fair allocation or an unfair allocation or delegate the choice, and we used a punishment option to elicit responsibility attributions. Our results show...

Retinal detachment results in visual loss and requires surgical treatment. The risk of retinal detachment depends, among other factors, on the vitreous rheology, which varies with age. To date, the viscoelasticity of the vitreous body has only been measured in cadaver eyes. However, the ex vivo and in vivo viscoelasticity may differ as a result of the effect of intravitreal membranes...

What determines reciprocity in employment relations? We conducteda controlled field experiment to measure the extent to whichmonetary and non-monetary gifts affect workers’ performance. We findthat non-monetary gifts have a much stronger impact than monetarygifts of equivalent value. We also observe that when workers are offeredthe choice, they prefer receiving money but reciprocate...

This paper studies the effect of leadership on the level and evolution of pro-social behavior using an artefactual field experiment on local public good provision. Participants decide how much to contribute to an actual conservation project. They can then revise their donations after being randomly matched in pairs on the basis of their authority and having observed each other’s...

We advance the measurement of trust in economics in two ways. First, we highlight the importance of clearly identifying the target of trust, particularly for obtaining concordance between attitudinal and behavioral measures of trust. Second, we introduce a novel behavioral measure of (dis)trust, based on individuals? willingness to pay to avoid being vulnerable to the target of trust...

Individuals sort into and out of economic environments based on their preferences and in response
to relative prices. We demonstrate the importance of such sorting for the measurement of social
preferences, using two laboratory experiments. First, allowing subjects to avoid environments in
which sharing is possible significantly reduces sharing. This reveals the...

Securitization makes mortgage-related risks internationally tradeable and thus contributes considerably to the international diversification of macroeconomic risk: in the years 2003–2008, the increase in international cross-holdings of securitized mortgage debt has lowered industrialized countries’ conditional consumption volatility (relative to the United States) by about 10–15...

van Honk and colleagues have taken our findings on the role of testosterone in ultimatum gamebargaining1 a step forward by showing that the hormone has important prosocial effects beyondthe ultimatum game by increasing cooperation in the public goods game (PGG)2. In contrast to theultimatum game, participants in the PGG decide simultaneously about their cooperation levels andare not...