Timing of Kindness - Evidence from a Field Experiment
Axel Ockenfels, Dirk Sliwka and Peter Werner
Forthcoming. In: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
We conduct a field experiment in a naturally occurring labor environment and track whether the performance of workers responds to unexpected wage increases. Specifically, we investigate how the timing of wage increases affects efforts. We find that workers' performance is substantially higher for the same total wage when their wage is increased in two steps as opposed to a single increase at the outset. Moreover, workers are more honest and are more willing to do voluntary extra work after surprising wage increases compared to a baseline condition without increases.
Introduction to a Special Issue Honoring Werner Güth
Martin Dufwenberg and Axel Ockenfels
Forthcoming. In: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
The Ultimatum Game and the Empirical Nature of Fair Choice
Gary E. Bolton and Axel Ockenfels
Forthcoming. In: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
(This is a chapter in the paper "How Werner Güth’s ultimatum game shaped our understanding of social behavior" by Eric van Damme; Ken Binmore, Alvin E. Roth, Larry Samuelson; Eyal Winter; Gary E. Bolton, Axel Ockenfels; Martin Dufwenberg, Georg Kirchsteiger; Uri Gneezy; Martin G. Kocher, Matthias Sutter; Alan Sanfey; Hartmut Kliemt; Reinhard Selten, Rosemarie Nagel; and Ofer H. Azar.)
Social responsibility promotes conservative risk behavior
Gary Bolton, Axel Ockenfels and Julia Stauf
Forthcoming. In: European Economic Review.
Previous studies show that group risk taking can be more conservative than individual risk taking. Two common, but untested reasons for this greater caution are the influence of social responsibility and a tendency to conform to the preferences of of others. We study changes in risk taking in simple settings, where another's risk taking can sometimes be observed, and where decisions affect not only one's own payoffs but sometimes also affect those of a passive, second party. We find that social responsibility leads to more conservative risk behavior in group decision making. Conformism has a more symmetric effect: Observing the choice of another tends to lead both individual and social decisions towards whatever the other’s expressed risk preference is. Direct tests fail to link the social behavior we observe to the social preference for distributional fairness common in decision-making under certainty.
Impulse Balancing in the Newsvendor Game
Axel Ockenfels and Reinhard Selten
2014. Games and Economic Behavior, Vol. 86, pp. 237-247.
One striking behavioral phenomenon is the "pull-to-center" bias in the newsvendor game: facing stochastic demand, subjects tend to order quantities between the expected profit maximizing quantity and mean demand. We show that the impulse balance equilibrium, which is based on a simple ex-post rationality principle along with an equilibrium condition, predicts the pull-to-center bias and other, more subtle observations in the laboratory newsvendor game.
Beliefs and Ingroup Favoritism
Axel Ockenfels and Peter Werner
Forthcoming. In: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization.
We report on two experiments designed to investigate the role of beliefs for ingroup favoritism. On average, dictators transfer substantially more to recipients who are publicly known to share the same group identity, compared to transfers given to recipients who are publicly known to be outgroup matches. However, there is substantially less ingroup favoritism if the dictator is informed that the recipient is unaware of the shared group membership. Moreover, dictators tend to ask less often for information about a recipient’s identity if disclosure would imply that the dictator’s identity is also disclosed to the recipient. The evidence supports the view that ingroup favoritism is partly belief-dependent, in addition to the notion that shared group identity per se changes charity preferences.
Bonus Payments and Reference Point Violations
Axel Ockenfels, Dirk Sliwka and Peter Werner
Forthcoming. In: Management Science.
We investigate how bonus payments affect satisfaction and performance of managers in a large, multinational company. We find that falling behind a natural reference standard for a fair bonus payment (a “reference point violation”) reduces satisfaction and subsequent performance. The effects are mitigated if information about one’s relative standing towards the reference point is withheld. A model and a laboratory experiment provide complementary insights and additional robustness checks.
Bonus Payments and Reference Point Violations - Online Appendix
Does Laboratory Mirror Behavior in Real World Markets? Fair Bargaining and Competitive Bidding on eBay
Gary E. Bolton and Axel Ockenfels
2014. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol. 97, pp. 143-154.
We conducted a framed field experiment on eBay, and examined to what extent both social and competitive laboratory behavior are robust to institutionally complex real world markets with experienced traders, who selected themselves into these markets. For buyers, the data strongly confirm the dichotomy between equitable bargaining and competitive bidding predicted by social preference equilibrium and suggested by lab evidence. Importantly, reputation building on eBay cannot explain the social behavior. We also observe that the behavioral patterns in the field experiment mirror fully naturally occurring trading patterns in the market. In particular, some sellers fail to use their commitment power as predicted by theories of both selfish and social behavior, with the pattern of deviation reflecting traders’ market experience outside the experiment. These patterns further amplify the dichotomy between bilateral and competitive bidding.
Scale Manipulation in Dictator Games
Axel Ockenfels and Peter Werner
2014. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. Vol. 97, pp. 138-142.
We let subjects estimate behavior and expectations of others before they play dictator games, and only vary the quantitative scales for their estimates. Our data show that this manipulation may significantly affect economic decisions: dictators who are presented a scale with a higher midpoint transfer on average more than dictators who are presented a scale with a lower midpoint. The effect is stronger and significant in a treatment where dictators are asked to guess the average transfer expected by the recipients, compared to a treatment where they are asked to guess average transfers. Our experiment suggests that scale manipulation can be used in laboratory social interaction to systematically affect specific beliefs and to study their causal effects on behavior.
Ending Rules in Internet Auctions: Design and Behavior
Axel Ockenfels and Alvin E. Roth
2013. Z. Neeman, A. Roth, and N. Vulkan (eds), The Handbook of Market Design, Oxford University Press, 325-344.
Langfristige Steuerung der Versorgungssicherheit im Stromsektor
Academic Advisory Board at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.
2012. Lead author.
Similarity increases altruistic punishment in humans
Thomas Mussweiler and Axel Ockenfels
2013. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Vol. 110 (48), pp. 19318-19323.
Humans are attracted to similar others. As a consequence, social networks are homogeneous in sociodemographic, intrapersonal, and other characteristics—a principle called homophily. Despite abundant evidence showing the importance of interpersonal similarity and homophily for human relationships, their behavioral correlates and cognitive foundations are poorly understood. Here, we show that perceived similarity substantially increases altruistic punishment, a key mechanism underlying human cooperation. We induced (dis)similarity perception by manipulating basic cognitive mechanisms in an economic cooperation game that included a punishment phase. We found that similarity-focused participants were more willing to punish others’ uncooperative behavior. This influence of similarity is not explained by group identity, which has the opposite effect on altruistic punishment. Our findings demonstrate that pure similarity promotes reciprocity in ways known to encourage cooperation. At the same time, the increased willingness to punish norm violations among similarity-focused participants provides a rationale for why similar people are more likely to build stable social relationships. Finally, our findings show that altruistic punishment is differentially involved in encouraging cooperation under pure similarity vs. in-group conditions.
Economics and Design of Balancing Power Markets in Germany
Felix Müsgens, Axel Ockenfels and Markus Peek
2014. International Journal of Electrical Power and Energy Systems (55), pp. 392-401.
This article analyzes the economic fundamentals that govern market design and behavior in German balancing power markets. Then, partly based on theoretical work by Chao and Wilson (2002), we illustrate the role of the scoring and the settlement rule as key elements of the market design. With sufficiently competitive markets, a settlement rule based on uniform pricing ensures efficient energy call in the balancing power market. A scoring rule based on capacity prices only ensures an efficient production schedule. Thus, both rules together with rational bidding ensure simultaneous efficiency on the balancing power market and the wholesale electricity market.
The (In)stability of Social Preferences: Using Justice Sensitivity to Predict When Altruism Collapses
Sebastian Lotz, Thomas Schlösser, Daylian Cain and Detlef Fetchenhauer
2013. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol. 93, pp. 141-148.
Recent research suggests that altruism can be surprisingly tenuous; minor situational variations can turn altruism on and off. For example, if provided with sufficient cover, “reluctant altruists” will often avoid situations that compel them to give, and they may even secretly renege on gifts they just made. This behavior puts pressure on classic explanations of altruism and raises many questions about its stability. Is everyone’s altruism prone to such collapse? If not, how can one predict it? We show that some people exhibit more stable altruism, predicting who is who weeks prior to the task. We show that high degrees of justice sensitivity is associated with pro-social behavior across situations, while low degrees of justice sensitivity relate to the use of situational variables as excuse to display less altruistic behavior. Our findings contribute to recent research on altruism and give insight into how to predict it.
An Experiment on Supply Function Competition
Friedel Bolle, Veronika Grimm, Axel Ockenfels and Xavier del Pozo
2013. European Economic Review. Vol. 63, pp. 170-185.
We experimentally investigate key predictions of supply function equilibrium. While, overall, equilibrium organizes bidding behavior well, we observe three important deviations. First, bidding is sensitive to theoretically irrelevant changes of the demand distribution. Second, in a market with symmetric firms we observe tacit collusion in that firms provide less than the predicted quantities. Third, in a market with asymmetric capacities, the larger firm bids more competitively than predicted, while the smaller firms still provide less than equilibrium quantities.
How to Negotiate Ambitious Global Emissions Abatement - A Statement of Key Principles and an Explanatory Note
Peter Cramton, Axel Ockenfels and Steven Stoft
Statement on a Global Carbon-Price Commitment*
To strengthen national commitments to reduce global carbon emissions, we propose that countries commit to a common global carbon-price path. These commitments would:
1. Accommodate each country’s combination of cap-and-trade, fossil-fuel taxes, and use of carbon-pricing revenues.
2. Implement differentiated responsibilities by rewarding poor, low-emission countries for their compliance with the common commitment.
In making this proposal, we note that the “Kyoto approach” to climate negotiations began by relying on two principles most essential for the resolution of a global problem of the commons: (1) Seek a global agreement, and (2) agree to a common commitment. Instead, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol ended up accepting individual commitments which are weak, because they depend on altruistic “political will.” In contrast, the proposed common commitment will help align national self-interests with the common welfare by eliminating contentious debates over individual national targets, and by assuring countries that their commitment will be matched by others.
* This proposal is only intended to address emissions of CO2 and other GHGs. Separate design efforts are needed for Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) and for energy research.
For further information please click here or see our "news"-page.
Capacity Market Fundamentals
Peter Cramton, Axel Ockenfels and Steven Stoft
2013. Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy, Vol. 2(2).
Electricity capacity markets work in tandem with electricity energy markets to ensure that investors build adequate capacity, in line with the preferences for reliability of consumers. The need for a capacity market stems from several market failures. One particularly notorious problem of electricity markets is low demand flexibility. Most customers are unaware of the real time prices of electricity, have no reason to respond to them, or cannot respond quickly to them, leading to highly price-inelastic demand. This contributes to blackouts in times of scarcity instead of the high prices needed to attract an efficient level and mix of generation capacity. Moreover, the problems caused by this market failure can result in considerable price volatility and market power that would be insignificant if the demand-side of the market were fully functional. Capacity markets are a means to ensure resource adequacy while mitigating other problems due to the demand side flaws. Our paper describes the basic economics behind the adequacy problem and addresses important challenges and misunderstandings in the process of actually designing capacity markets.
Is it all about the self? The effect of self-control depletion on ultimatum game proposers
Eliran Halali, Yoella Bereby-Meyer and Axel Ockenfels
2013. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Vol. 7.
In the ultimatum-game, as in many real-life social exchange situations, the selfish motive to maximize own gains conflicts with fairness preferences. In the present study we manipulated the availability of cognitive-control resources for ultimatum-game proposers to test whether preference for fairness is a deliberative cognitive-controlled act or an automatic act. In two experiments we found that a shortage in cognitive control (ego depletion) led proposers in the ultimatum game to propose significantly more equal split offers than non-depleted proposers. These results can be interpreted as resulting from an automatic concern for fairness, or from a greater fear of rejection, which would be in line with a purely self-interested response. To separate these competing explanations, in Experiment 2 we conducted a dictator-game in which the responder cannot reject the offer. In contrast to the increased fairness behavior demonstrated by depleted ultimatum-game proposers, we found that depleted dictator-game allocators chose the equal split significantly less often than non-depleted allocators. These results indicate that fairness preferences are automatically driven among ultimatum game proposers. The automatic fair behavior, however, at least partially reflects concern about self-interest gain. We discuss different explanations for these results.
What is fair is good! Evidence of consumers’ taste for fairness
Sebastian Lotz, Fabian Christandl and Detlef Fetchenhauer
2013. Food Quality and Preference. Vol. 30 (2), pp. 139 - 144.
Many consumers consider a variety of ethical issues in product choice and preference. The aim of the present research is to explore the effect of ethically labeled foods and drinks (e.g., Fair Trade) on consumers’ reported taste experience. In three studies, we asked participants to taste coffee (Study 1) or chocolate (Studies 2 and 3), and participants in all studies reported that the products tasted significantly better when they were labeled Fair Trade. Moreover, prior to rating the products, the majority of participants in Studies 2 and 3 indicated that they did not believe products with ethical labels to taste differently. Yet, even the participants who explicitly made this claim reported that the chocolate tasted better when it was labeled Fair Trade. Additionally, Study 3 suggests affect as a critical variable mediating this effect. Thus, consumers rate Fair Trade products more positively, because they experience positive affect through consumption of ethical goods. We discuss this result with respect to consumers and producers, and we argue that the observed effect can increase value for both.
Not all speculation is treated equally: Moral judgments of speculative short selling
Sebastian Lotz and Andrea Fix
2013. Journal of Economic Psychology. Vol. 37, pp. 34-41.
Since the recent financial crisis, regulators and the general public have focused on financial speculation as one of its potential causes. In addition to the roles played by rating agencies and complicated financial engineering, speculative short sales have been put into question. However, laypeople’s moral judgments about this type of financial speculation have rarely been investigated in economic psychology. The present study aims to fill this gap. Across four studies, we find that laypeople’s moral judgments of short selling are significantly harsher than their judgments of long positions. Both successful (Study 1) and unsuccessful (Study 2) short selling receives harsher moral judgments. In addition, studies which manipulate the moral character of the shorted asset (Study 3) or the time horizon of the investment strategy (Study 4) support the conclusion that short selling is considered less moral than taking a similar long position. The results present consistent support for a judgment bias of economic laypeople in the domain of financial economics.
An Experiment on Emissions Trading: The Effect of Different Allocation Mechanisms
Veronika Grimm and Lyuba Ilieva
2013. Journal of Regulatory Economics, Vol. 44(3), pp. 308-338.
In theory, efficiency and compliance levels induced by an emission trading system should not depend on the initial allocation mechanism for permits in the absence of transaction costs. In a laboratory experiment we investigate this prediction by comparing frequent and infrequent auctioning as well as two different grandfathering schemes under market rules that closely resemble those of the European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS). Our experimental results suggest that, contrary to theoretical predictions, the initial allocation procedure has the potential to affect efficiency of the final permit allocation. While we do not identify an effect of the initial allocation procedure itself (auction vs. grandfathering), we observe higher final efficiency after infrequent auctioning of permits than for frequent auctioning. Surprisingly, for a grandfathering scheme that distributes permits proportional to expected needs the high initial efficiency is substantially reduced by secondary market trading. An analysis of behavioral patterns shows that permit prices and abatement levels are initially substantially higher if permits are allocated by auction and we also find more over-banking as compared to the grandfathering treatments. Treatment differences diminish in the course of the experiment.
The evolution of trust: How trust is built up and destroyed in advanced society: Different Perspectives on Trust
Detlef Fetchenhauer, Wolfgang Jagodzinski, Kazufumi Manabe, Axel Ockenfels, Akira Okada, Gisela Trommsdorff, and Toshio Yamagishi
2013. Dynamics of Traditional Research Societies in a Rapidly Changing World. IUDICIUM Verlag, München, 35-66.
The Agencies Method for Coalition Formation in Experimental Games
John F. Nash, Rosemarie Nagel, Axel Ockenfels and Reinhard Selten
2012. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 109 (50), pp. 20358-20363.
In society, power is often transferred to another person or group. A previous work studied the evolution of cooperation among robot players through a coalition formation game with a non-cooperative procedure of acceptance of an agency of another player. Motivated by this previous work, we conduct a laboratory experiment on finitely repeated three-person coalition formation games. Human players with different strength according to the coalition payoffs can accept a transfer of power to another player, the agent, who then distributes the coalition payoffs. We find that the agencies method for coalition formation is quite successful in promoting efficiency. However, the agent faces a tension between short-term incentives of not equally distributing the coalition payoff and the long-term concern to keep cooperation going. In a given round, the strong player in our experiment often resolves this tension approximately in line with the Shapley value and the nucleolus. Yet aggregated over all rounds, the payoff differences between players are rather small, and the equal division of payoffs predicts about 80% of all groups best. One reason is that the voting procedure appears to induce a balance of power, independent of the individual player's strength: Selfish subjects tend to be voted out of their agency and are further disciplined by reciprocal behaviors.
Too Much Information Sharing? Welfare Effects of Sharing Acquired Cost Information in Oligopoly
Jos Jansen and Juan-Jose Ganuza
2013. Journal of Industrial Economics, Vol. 61(4), pp. 845-876.
By using general information structures and precision criteria based on the dispersion of conditional expectations, we study how oligopolists’ information acquisition decisions may change the effects of information sharing on the consumer surplus. Sharing information about individual cost parameters gives the following trade-off in Cournot oligopoly. On the one hand, it decreases the expected consumer surplus for a given information precision, as the literature shows. On the other hand, information sharing increases the firms’ incentives to acquire information, and the consumer surplus increases in the precision of the firms’ information. Interestingly, the latter effect may dominate the former effect.
Heterogeneity and Partnership Dissolution Mechanisms: Theory and Lab Evidence
Thomas Kittsteiner, Axel Ockenfels and Nadja Trhal
2012. Economic Letters, Vol. 117: 394–396
We experimentally compare two partnership dissolution mechanisms, the widely-used buy-sell clause and the winner’s bid auction. While standard theory does well in organizing many laboratory patterns, it does not easily capture that many subjects bid valuations, especially in the buy-sell clause. As a result of this behavior, the buy-sell clause weakly outperforms the auction with respect to efficiency.
Beyond the need to boast: Cost concealment incentives and exit in Cournot oligopoly
Jos Jansen
2012. Research in Economics, Vol. 66: 239-245
This paper studies the incentives for production cost disclosure in an asymmetric Cournot oligopoly. Whereas the efficient firm (consumers) prefers information sharing (concealment) when the firms choose accommodating strategies in the product market, the firm (consumers) may prefer information concealment (sharing) when it can exclude its competitors from the market. Hence, the rankings of expected profit and consumer surplus can be reversed if exit of the inefficient firms is possible. Although the efficient firm has stronger incentives to share information when it shares strategically, there remain cases in which the firm conceals information in equilibrium to induce exit.
Engineering Trust - Reciprocity in the Production of Reputation Information
Gary Bolton, Ben Greiner, and Axel Ockenfels
2013. Management Science, Vol. 59, 265-285.
Reciprocal feedback distorts the production and content of reputation information, hampering trust and trade efficiency. Data from eBay and other sources combined with laboratory data provide a robust picture of how reciprocity can be guided by changes in the way feedback information flows through the system, leading to more accurate reputation information, more trust and more efficient trade.
Engineering Trust - Reciprocity in the Production of Reputation Information
Engineering Trust - Reciprocity in the Production of Reputation Information - Appendix
How activating cognitive content shapes trust: A subliminal priming study
Ann-Christin Posten, Axel Ockenfels and Thomas Mussweiler
2014. Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 41, pp. 12 - 19.
The activation of cognitive contents plays a prominent role in social psychological research. Yet, so far this has received little attention in economics. In our research we connect a standard social psychological manipulation to activate cognitive content (a trust vs. distrust priming manipulation) to a classic paradigm from economics (a trust game). Our findings demonstrate that subliminally activating the concept of trust (vs. distrust) leads participants to judge a series of strangers as more (vs. less) trustworthy. Moreover, our research shows for the first time that such a subliminal priming manipulation shapes the subsequent sending behavior in a fictitious version of a standard economic trust game. This suggests that psychological priming techniques allow new insights into what determines beliefs in economic games.
Wege zu einer wirksamen Klimapolitik
Achim Wambach, Friedrich Breyer, Roman Inderst, Axel Ockenfels, Carl Christian von Weizsäcker et al.
2012. Gutachten des Wissenschaftlichen Beirats beim Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie
Wege zu einer wirksamen Klimapolitik
Balancing Power Markets in Germany: Timing Matters
Felix Müsgens, Axel Ockenfels, Markus Peek
2012. Zeitschrift für Energiewirtschaft, Heft 36: 1-7
This paper analyzes timing issues on the German balancing power market. We focus the analysis on the length of the bidding period, i.e. the length of the time period a supplier has to provide balancing power capacities, and the question of how far before the beginning of a bidding period the auction should be carried out. We show that different load levels require different plants for the optimal provision of balancing power. In a longer bidding period, the power plants that have the lowest average cost in the bidding period are unlikely to be efficient in all hours of the bidding period. Hence, shortening bidding periods can increase efficiency. Furthermore, we show that an early commitment on a power plant’s mode of operation (when uncertainty about resulting spot prices is still relatively high) also reduces efficiency. This suggests that the auction should be held relatively close to the beginning of the bidding period. Furthermore, we discuss some advantages of a liquid real time market.
Behavioral economic engineering
Gary E. Bolton and Axel Ockenfels
2012. Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 33 (3): 665-676
Economic engineering is the science of designing real-world institutions and mechanisms that align individual incentives and behavior with the underlying goals. This paper discusses why behavioral economic engineering is a promising research field, how behavioral phenomena may affect economic engineering, and the role of theory and laboratory experiments for behavioral economic engineering in practice. We provide examples, many from our own work.
Managers and Students as Newsvendors
Gary E. Bolton, Axel Ockenfels and Ulrich Thonemann
Management Science, December 2012, Volume 58.12, pp. 2225-2233.
We compare how experienced procurement managers and students solve the newsvendor problem. We find that managers broadly exhibit the same kind of pull-to-center bias as do students. Also, managers use information and task-training no better than students. The performance of managers is positively affected by the level of their education and their level in the organizational hierarchy. We discuss implications for theory and for how ordering might be improved in practice.
Internet Auctions
Ben Greiner, Axel Ockenfels, and Abdolkarim Sadrieh
Forthcoming. In: M. Peitz and J. Waldfogel (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Digital Economy, Oxford University Press.
Hiding behind a small cake' in a newspaper dictator game
Axel Ockenfels, Peter Werner
2012. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Vol. 82 (1): 82-85
We conduct an Internet dictator game experiment in collaboration with the popular German Sunday paper “Welt am Sonntag”, employing a wider and more representative subject pool than standard laboratory experiments. Recipients either knew or did not know the size of the cake distributed by the dictator. We find that, in case of incomplete information, some dictators 'hide behind the small cake', indicating that beliefs directly enter the social utility function.
The Dynamic Interplay of Inequality and Trust - An Experimental Study
Ben Greiner, Axel Ockenfels, Peter Werner
2012. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Vol. 81 (2): 355-365
We study the interplay of inequality and trust in a dynamic game, where trust increases efficiency and thus allows higher growth of the experimental economy in the future. We find that trust is initially high in a treatment starting with equal endowments, but decreases over time. In a treatment with unequal endowments, trust is initially lower yet remains relatively stable. The difference seems partly due to the fact that equal start positions increase subjects’ inclination to condition their trust decisions on wealth comparisons, whereas conditional trust is much less prevalent with unequal initial endowments. As a result, with respect to efficiency, the initially more unequal economy fares worse in the short run but better in the long run, and the disparity of wealth distributions across economies mitigates over time.
Die Wirtschaftswissenschaft nach der Wirtschaftskrise
Axel Ockenfels
2011. WPg Die Wirtschaftsprüfung, Jg. 64 (Aug): Editorial
Die Wirtschaftswissenschaft steht in der Kritik. Die Theorie habe die Krise nicht prognostiziert, sei einem falschen Menschenbild verhaftet und zu sehr mit sich selbst beschäftigt. Viel davon ist richtig, anderes ist überzogen. Was sind die Lehren aus der Wirtschaftskrise für die Wirtschaftswissenschaft?
Die Wirtschaftswissenschaft nach der Wirtschaftskrise
Ökonomik und Design von Kapazitätsmärkten im Stromsektor
Peter Cramton and Axel Ockenfels
2011. Energiewirtschaftliche Tagesfragen, 61.Jg., Heft 9: 14,15
Kapazitätsmärkte können angemessene Erzeugungskapazitäten gewährleisten und dadurch einen Beitrag zur Zuverlässigkeit der Stromversorgung leisten. Kapazitätsmärkte sind oft notwendig, weil andernfalls Marktversagen durch verzerrte Investitionsanreize droht. Insbesondere führt eine mangelnde Elastizität der Nachfrage bei Kapazitätsknappheit zu Problemen bei der Markträumung und Preisbildung. Im Ergebnis kann es zu Kapazitätsproblemen und unfreiwilliger Stromrationierung kommen. Eine aktuelle Untersuchung der Autoren erläutert die ökonomisch fundierten Gründe für einen Kapazitätsmarkt, präsentiert ein Marktdesign, welches die besten Merkmale verschiedener Lösungsansätze aus der Praxis und Wissenschaft zusammenführt, und erörtert weitere Lösungsansätze. Zudem wird auch diskutiert, ob die Einführung eines Kapazitätsmarktes derzeit für Europa und insbesondere Deutschland sinnvoll erscheint.
Ökonomik und Design von Kapazitätsmärkten im Stromsektor
Economics and design of capacity markets for the power sector
Peter Cramton and Axel Ockenfels
Zeitschrift für Energiewirtschaft, June 2012, Volume 36, Issue 2, pp. 113-134.
Capacity markets are a means to assure resource adequacy. The need for a capacity market stems from several market failures the most prominent of which is the absence of a robust demand-side. Limited demand response makes market clearing problematic in times of scarcity. We present the economic motivation for a capacity market, present one specific market design that utilizes the best design features from various resource adequacy approaches analyzed in the literature, and we discuss other instruments to deal with the problems. We then discuss the suitability of the market for Europe and Germany in particular.
Economics and design of capacity markets for the power sector
Negotiating reputations
Axel Ockenfels, Paul Resnick
Gary Bolton, and Rachel Croson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Conflict Resolution, Oxford University Press.
Reputation information is useful to make markets and negotiations function when there is a threat of moral hazard or adverse selection. But what happens when the reputation information itself is endogenously provided? We explore the role of feedback provision as a lever in negotiations over the surplus from trade, and the impact of its negotiated status on the functioning of the reputation system. Throughout, we summarize evidence from laboratory experiments and field data from eBay.
Design von Informationsfeedback in Regelenergiemärkten
Felix Müsgens & Axel Ockenfels
2011. Zeitschrift für Energiewirtschaft, Heft 35: 249-256
Auf vielen kontinentaleuropäischen Energiemärkten werden derzeit die Regeln für das Feedback auf Regelenergiemärkten diskutiert: welche Informationen zu vergangenen Auktionen sollen wann veröffentlicht werden? Dieser Artikel beleuchtet Vor- und Nachteile verschiedener Feedbackpolitiken am Beispiel der Schweizer Regelenergiemärkte. Die Veröffentlichung des Grenzleistungspreises ist in der Regel zu empfehlen. Dies gilt jedoch nicht für weitere Informationen (insbesondere extramarginale Gebote). Die optimale Feedbackpolitik hängt allerdings vom jeweiligen Marktdesign und von der Marktstruktur ab.
Still different after all these years: Solidarity behavior in East and West Germany
Jeannette Brosig, Christoph Helbach, Axel Ockenfels and Joachim Weimann
2011. Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 95 (11-12): 1373-1376
Using data from laboratory experiments, we find that East Germans show consistently less solidarity than West Germans; there has been no convergence in the 20 years after the reunification. While it has recently been estimated that political values converge 20 to 40 years after the reunification (Alesina and Fuchs-Schündeln, 2007), we conclude from our findings that social behavior changes more slowly than political values. We hypothesize that this is due to complementarities involved in individual social behavior and the necessity to coordinate on social norms on the society level.
Brief des Wissenschaftlichen Beirats zur Novelle des Erneuerbare Energien Gesetzes
Achim Wambach, Roman Inderst und Axel Ockenfels
2011. Wissenschaftlicher Beirat beim Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Technologie
Brief des Wissenschaftlichen Beirats zur Novelle des Erneuerbare Energien Gesetzes