Holger A. Rau

I am an Adjunct Professor at the University of Göttingen. I study laboratory- and field experiments in the areas of Behavioral Economics, Labor Markets, Public Economics, and Behavioral Finance. A special interest is the analysis of the explanatory power of economic preferences to predict market outcomes in organizations and on (financial) markets. In my labor-market agenda, I focus on gender differences in the reactions to institutions and incentives, studying phenomena, such as the gender wage gap. My latest projects involve analyzing laboratory and field experiments that explore the impact of gender differences in preferences on leadership behavior in firms and markets, as well as the role of digitalization. I am also interested in irrational investor behavior, such as the disposition effect. At the moment, I hold the position of Principal Investigator for a large interdisciplinary DFG project on "Gender Effects in Oligopolistic Markets: Leadership and Collusion."

So far, I published 33 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Download Full CV

LATEST R&Rs, Revisions, and Working Papers

Gender Differences in Dishonesty Disappear When Leaders Make Decisions on Behalf of their Team [with K. Grosch, S. Müller, and L. Wasserka-Zhurakhovska]
Revise & Resubmit in The Leadership Quartely
Partial Cartels and Umbrella Effects. An Experimental Study [with Lisa Bruttel, and Vasilisa Petrishcheva]
Reject & Resubmit in The Economic Journal

LATEST Publications

The effects of profit-sharing distributions on employee stock purchase plan participation (mit Jan Christoph Hennig, Rieke Hullmann und Michael Wolff), Frontiers in Behavioral Economics 3, 1484468, 2025
Gender and Cooperation in the Presence of Negative Externalities [with Justus Haucap, and Christina Heldman], Games and Economic Behavior 147, 148-168, 2024
The Effects of Betrayal Aversion on Effort Provision when Incentives are Fragile [with Volker Benndorf, and Stephan Müller], Management Science 70, 7750-7769, 2024

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Competition and moral behavior: A meta-analysis of 45 crowd-sourced experimental designs [with Christoph Huber, Anna Dreber, Felix Holzmeister, and many more], Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120 (23) e2215572120, 2023

The Team Allocator Game: Allocation Power in Public Good Games [with A. Karakostas, M. Kocher, D. Matzat, G. Riewe],
Games and Economic Behavior 140, 73-87, 2023

Economic Preferences and Compliance in the Social Stress Test of the COVID-19 Crisis [with S. Müller],
Journal of Public Economics 194, 104322, 2021.

Decisions under Uncertainty in Social Contexts [with S. Müller],
Games and Economic Behavior 116, 73-95, 2019.

On the Impact of Quotas and Decision Rules in Collective Bargaining [with R. Feicht, V. Grimm and G. Stephan],
European Economic Review 100, 175-192, 2017.

How Competitiveness May Cause a Gender Wage Gap: Experimental Evidence [with M. Heinz and H.T. Normann),
European Economic Review 90, 336-349, 2016.

The Relation of Risk Attitudes and Other-Regarding Preferences: A Within-Subjects Analysis [with S. Müller],
European Economic Review 85, 1-7, 2016.

Full List of Publications here