Refereed Publications
Articles in Refereed Journals
Leveling Up? An inter-neighborhood experiment on parochialism and the efficiency of multi-level public goods provision (with Carlo Gallier, Timo Goeschl, Martin Kesternich and Christiane Reif), Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 164, 500-517 , 2019.
Many public goods can be provided at different spatial levels. Evidence from social identity theory and in-group favoritism raises the possibility that when higher-level provision is more efficient, subjects’ narrow concern for local outcomes could undermine efficiency. Building on the experimental paradigm of multi-level public good games and the concept of “neighborhood attachment,” we conduct an artefactual field experiment with over 600 participants in a setting conducive to routine parochial behavior. In an inter-neighborhood intra-region design, subjects allocate an endowment between a personal, a local, and a regional public good account. The between-subjects design crosses two treatment dimensions: One informs subjects that the smaller local group consists of members from their own neighborhood, while the other varies the relative productivity at the two public goods provision levels. We find evidence for parochialism, but contrary to our hypothesis, parochialism does not interfere with efficiency: The average subject responds to a change in relative productivities at the local and regional levels in the same way, whether they are aware of their neighbors’ presence in the small group or not. The results even hold for subjects with above-median neighborhood attachment and subjects primed on neighborhood attachment.
(earlier working paper version)
The Power of Active Choice: Field Experimental Evidence on Repeated Contribution Decisions to a Carbon Offsetting Program (with Florens Flues and Martin Kesternich), European Economic Review, 114, 76-91, 2019.
We study the effect of a subtle change in the choice architecture on offsetting behavior. In a large-scale field experiment, we examine repeated voluntary contributions to a carbon offsetting program during the online purchase of long-distance bus tickets. In the control group, travelers had the option to offset their carbon emissions resulting from their bus trip, but they could also simply ignore the offer. In the treatment group, travelers were forced to actively choose whether to offset their carbon emissions or not. This "active choice" requirement immediately increased participation in the offsetting program by almost 50%. Investigating returning customers, we find that this treatment remains effective over time. We report evidence that some customers tend to keep avoiding active contribution decisions in subsequent booking decisions.
(earlier working paper version)
The effect of emission information on housing prices: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (with Alex Rohlf and Katherine Veie), Environmental and Resource Economics, 69, 23-74, 2018.
In this paper, we study whether the release of emission information has an effect on housing prices with the event under study being the release and publication of the first wave of data on emission quantities from the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register in 2009. Our analysis is based on quarterly housing prices at the German postal code level for the years 2007-2011 and provides the first evidence from Europe on this research question. Estimating a differences-in-differences model and controlling for observable differences in land use, housing type distribution, tax revenues and other postal code area characteristics by means of propensity score matching, we find no significant effect of the release of emission information on the value of houses in affected postal code areas. This result survives a number of robustness checks designed to assess whether our findings are due to data aggregation issues or the actual treatment definition. This leads to the conclusion that on an aggregate level the 2009 publication of E-PRTR data did not have an immediate and noticeable effect on housing prices in Germany.
(earlier working paper version)
Intertemporal stability of ambiguity preferences (with Peter Dürsch and Benjamin Roth), Journal of Economic Psychology, 60, 7-20, 2017.
We analyze the stability of ambiguity preferences experimentally, by repeatedly eliciting ambiguity attitudes towards multiple 3-color Ellsberg urns over a period of two months. 57% of the choices show stable preferences over the time which is significantly higher than random choices would suggest, but significantly lower than the level of consistency in a control treatment without a time lag (71%). Over the same time frame, we do not find a significant change in risk preferences. Interestingly, for subjects who are able to recall their ambiguity decision after two months correctly, the share of consistent choices does not drop significantly over time.
(earlier working paper version)
Repeated pro-social behavior in the presence of economic interventions (with Carlo Gallier and Christiane Reif), Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 69, 18-28, 2017.
We investigate the dynamic effects of a charitable lottery and an income tax on donations. The analysis is based on a two-round dictator game with the subject’s charity of choice as recipient and additional incentives in the first round only. The immediate effect of a charitable lottery leads to higher contributions and we cannot find substantial crowding out of voluntary contributions in the presence of an income tax. These economic interventions weakly spill-over to the subsequent donation decisions without additional incentives. Our results suggest the presence of consistency seeking behaviour. This is especially true for a subgroup of participants with a rule-based mind-set and our research shows the importance of the subjects’ moral framework in the context of dynamic pro-social behaviour.
Zum Stromkonsum von Haushalten in Grundsicherung: Eine empirische Analyse für Deutschland (with Gerd Aigeltinger, Peter Heindl, Verena Liessem, Clarita Schwengers and Claire Vogt), Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, 18, 348-367, 2017.
In diesem Aufsatz werden der Stromkonsum und die Kosten, die den Haushalten in Grundsicherung in Deutschland daraus entstehen, untersucht. Dazu wird ein Datensatz ausgewertet, der mehr als 22.000 Haushalte mit Leistungsbezug nach SGB II und SGB XII in verschiedenen Haushaltszusammensetzungen umfasst. Die Ergebnisse der empirischen Analyse zeigen, dass die Haushaltszusammensetzung sowie die Art der Warmwasserbereitung erheblichen Einfluss auf die entstehenden Verbräuche und Kosten haben. Insbesondere die elektrische Warmwasserbereitung verursacht erhebliche zusätzliche Kosten, die vor allem in Familien oder bei Alleinerziehenden mit Kleinkindern mit den derzeitigen Mehrbedarfspauschalen nicht gedeckt werden können. Es konnte nur eine schwache Nachfragereaktion der Haushalte auf Veränderungen des Strompreises nachgewiesen werden. Insgesamt zeigt sich, dass die veranschlagten Anteile für Strom in den Regelbedarfen nach SGB II und SGB XII im Durchschnitt nicht zur Begleichung der Stromkosten ausreichen. Dieses Problem verschärft sich insbesondere in Fällen, in denen Warmwasser mit Strom bereitet wird.
(earlier working paper version)
The Long-Term Impact of Matching and Rebate Subsidies when Public Goods are Impure: Field Experimental Evidence from the Carbon Offsetting Market (with Martin Kesternich and Andreas Löschel), Journal of Public Economics, 137, 70-78, 2016.
In this paper, we investigate both short- and long-term impacts of financial stimuli on public goods provision when contributions are tied to individual harm-related behavior. We conduct a large-scale field experiment to examine voluntary contributions to a carbon offsetting program during the online purchase of a bus ticket. We systematically vary the individual payoff structure by introducing different price rebates (25%, 50%, 75%) and corresponding matching grants (1/3:1, 1:1, 3:1). Using data on returning customers, we investigate the long-term effects of the different stimuli, both while treatments were in place as well as their persistence for the time after treatment removal. In the first bookings, our results show that all price rebates schemes increase the participation rate in the offsetting program, while we find weaker effects for matching grants. When bookers are treated repeatedly, only the equal (1:1) matching scheme continues to lead to higher participation rates. Even after removing the subsidies, we report higher participation rates for customers previously facing a 1:1 matching scheme. This treatment is also the only one increasing net contributions of customers compared to the control group.
(earlier working paper version)
Book chapter
The young prisoner's dilemma: Juvenile recidivism in Germany (with Stefan Pichler), in: Philip J. Cook, Stephen Machin, Olivier Marie, Giovanni Mastrobuoni, Lessons from the Economics of Crime: What Reduces Offending?, Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 111-130, 2013.
This chapter reviews the literature of juvenile recidivism and provides an in depth analysis of recent evidence from Germany. While the empirical literature shows that transferring juveniles to criminal courts typically leads to higher recidivism in the United States, this result might not be generalizable to other legal systems. Based on a unique sample of inmates in Germany and applying both a bivariate probit and a regression discontinuity design, the authors do not find that the application of criminal law increases juvenile recidivism. Rather, the analysis suggests that sentencing adolescents as adults reduces recidivism in Germany.