Abstract: Trust is thought to be an important driver of economic growth and other economic outcomes. Previous studies suggest that trust may be a combination of risk attitudes, distributional preferences, betrayal aversion, and beliefs about the probability of being reciprocated. We compare the results of a binary trust game to the results of a series of control treatments that remove the...
In online commerce, obfuscation strategies by sellers are hypothesized to mislead consumers to their detriment and to the profit of sellers. One such obfuscation strategy is partitioned pricing in which the price is split into a base price and add-on fees. While empirical evidence suggests that partitioned pricing affects consumer decisions through salience effects, its consumer welfare consequences ...
Mobile money is an innovation that allows financial transactions to be performed via a cell phone. Even in poor regions of Africa, almost everyone has a cell phone; therefore, mobile money could both contribute to the continent’s economic growth and ensure that no Africans are excluded from access to financial services. However, DIW Berlin data from Uganda show that mobile money is actually used less ...
There are various reasons why humans may want to reduce their consumption of meat and other animal products. In the following, we lay out important stylized facts about individual meat consumption, and then discuss the challenges and puzzles surrounding effective behavior change toward more sustainable, plant-based diets.
This paper examines the effect of reduced self-control on debt-taking in a laboratory experiment. We manipulate self-control using an ego depletion task and show that it is effective. Following the ego depletion task, participants can anonymously buy hot drinks on credit. We find no significant average effects, but find that treated individuals that have low financial literacy are more likely to buy ...
We employ a psychometrically validated performance test to study economic competence among representative sample of 1,687 early secondary school students in Southwest Germany. The rich dataset allows us to study variation in economic competence across school types and observable student characteristics. Our results show that economic competence is significantly lower among female students, migrants, ...
This study examines the effect of a soft commitment device in the form of a savings goal calendar on savings for small business owners in Kampala, Uganda. We run a randomized controlled trial (RCT) under which the treatment group receives a calendar designed to set savings goals and to make a plan to reach this goal. The control group is given a plain calendar. We find no average effect on savings, ...
While in January 2012, Denmark increased the long-standing tax on sugary soft drinks, the tax was cut byhalf in July 2013 and then completely repealed in January 2014. In this study, we examine whetherincreases and cuts of the soft drink tax lead to similar over- or under-shifting to prices and to similardemand responses. We use longitudinal scanner data of 1,282 Danish households to estimate within-product ...
“Sin taxes” are high on the political agenda in the global fight against obesity. Ac- cording to theory, they are welfare improving if consumers with low self-control are at least as price responsive as consumers with high self-control, even in the absence of ex- ternalities. In this paper, we investigate if consumers with low and high self-control react differently to sin tax variation. For identification, ...
Most policy instruments to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have focused on producers, and on the energy efficiency of buildings, vehicles and other products. Behavioural changes related to climate change also impact ‘in-use’ emissions, and potentially, emissions both ‘upstream’ (including from imported goods) and ‘downstream’ (eg disposal). Consumption-oriented policies may provide avenues to ...