Ernst Fehr

Biographic Data

ID169409
NAMEErnst Fehr
GIVEN NAMESErnst
FAMILY NAMEFehr
SIGNATUREFEHR E
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of Zurich
ORCID0000-0001-6325-7821
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS75
TOTAL CITATIONS1952
AUTHOR COUNT74
EDITOR COUNT1
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1988
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX12

  • The Complementarity Between Trust and Contract Enforcement

    Open AccessBjörn Bartling, Ernst Fehr et al.ARTICLEThe Economic Journal2025

    Agreements are rarely fully enforceable, exposing trading parties to the risk of exploitation. In such cases, trust—defined as the belief in the trustworthiness of others—may be key to realizing gains from trade. This paper asks whether trust substitutes for or complements contract enforcement. While intuition may suggest trust matters more when enforcement is weak, our experiment, which exogenously varies both trust and enforcement, shows it can…

  • Social Preferences and Redistributive Politics

    Ernst Fehr, Thomas Epper et al.ARTICLEThe Review of Economics and…2024

    We study the link between social preferences and a behaviorally validated measure of support for redistribution. We uncover three fundamentally distinct social preference types: predominantly selfish, inequality averse and altruistic individuals. Inequality averse and altruistic individuals display a much stronger support for redistribution, particularly if they are more affluent. Beliefs about the role of effort and luck for success play no role…

  • The Impact of Working-Memory Training on Children’s Cognitive and Noncognitive Skills

    Eva M Berger, Ernst Fehr et al.ARTICLEJournal of Political Economy2024

  • Does Market Interaction Erode Moral Values

    Björn Bartling, Ernst Fehr et al.ARTICLEThe Review of Economics and…2023

    The widespread use of markets leads to unprecedented material well-being in many societies. We study whether market interaction, as a side effect, erodes moral values. In an influential paper, Falk and Szech (2013) provide experimental data that seem to suggest that “market interaction erodes moral values.” Although we replicate their main treatment effect, we show that additional treatments are necessary to corroborate their conclusion. These tr…

  • Can people detect the trustworthiness of strangers based on their facial appearance

    Open AccessB Jaeger, Bastiaan Oud et al.ARTICLEEvolution and Human Behavior2022

    Although cooperation can lead to mutually beneficial outcomes, cooperative actions only pay off for the individual if others can be trusted to cooperate as well. Identifying trustworthy interaction partners is therefore a central challenge in human social life. How do people navigate this challenge? Prior work suggests that people rely on facial appearance to judge the trustworthiness of strangers. However, the question of whether these judgments…

  • Teaching self-regulation

    Open AccessDaniel Schunk, Eva M Berger et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2022References: 43

  • Time Will Tell: Recovering Preferences When Choices Are Noisy

    Carlos Alós-Ferrer, Ernst Fehr et al.ARTICLEJournal of Political Economy2021Cited by: 7References: 72

  • The rise of affectivism

    Open AccessDaniel Dukes, Kathryn Abrams et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2021Cited by: 8References: 9

  • The evolution of distorted beliefs vs. mistaken choices under asymmetric error costs

    Open AccessC Efferson, Ryan Mckay et al.ARTICLEEvolutionary Human Sciences2020References: 71

    Why do people sometimes hold unjustified beliefs and make harmful choices? Three hypotheses include (a) contemporary incentives in which some errors cost more than others, (b) cognitive biases evolved to manage ancestral incentives with variation in error costs and (c) social learning based on choice frequencies. With both modelling and a behavioural experiment, we examined all three mechanisms. The model and experiment support the conclusion tha…

  • A registered replication study on oxytocin and trust

    Open AccessCarolyn H Declerck, C Boone et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2020Cited by: 2References: 62

  • The promise and the peril of using social influence to reverse harmful traditions

    Open AccessC Efferson, Sonja Vogt et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2019Cited by: 12References: 58

  • Normative foundations of human cooperation

    Open AccessErnst Fehr, Ivo SchurtenbergerARTICLENature Human Behaviour2018Cited by: 20References: 123

  • The risk of female genital cutting in Europe: Comparing immigrant attitudes toward uncut girls with attitudes in a practicing country

    Open AccessSonja Vogt, C Efferson et al.ARTICLESSM - Population Health2017

    Worldwide, an estimated 200 million girls and women have been subjected to female genital cutting. Female genital cutting is defined as an intentional injury to the female genitalia without medical justification. The practice occurs in at least 29 countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In addition, globalization and migration have brought immigrants from countries where cutting is commonly practiced to countries where cutting is not trad…

  • Redefine statistical significance

    Open AccessDaniel J Benjamin, James O Berger et al.ARTICLENature Human Behaviour2017Cited by: 106References: 14

  • Eye spots do not increase altruism in children

    Open AccessSonja Vogt, C Efferson et al.ARTICLEEvolution and Human Behavior2015

  • Evidence for Countercyclical Risk Aversion: An Experiment with Financial Professionals

    Alain Cohn, Jan Engelmann et al.ARTICLEAmerican Economic Review2015

    Countercyclical risk aversion can explain major puzzles such as the high volatility of asset prices. Evidence for its existence is, however, scarce because of the host of factors that simultaneously change during financial cycles. We circumvent these problems by priming financial professionals with either a boom or a bust scenario. Subjects primed with a financial bust were substantially more fearful and risk averse than those primed with a boom,…

  • The Role of Bounded Rationality and Imperfect Information in Subgame Perfect Implementation - An Empirical Investigation

    Open AccessPhilippe Aghion, Ernst Fehr et al.ARTICLESSRN Electronic Journal2015

  • The Role of Bounded Rationality and Imperfect Information in Subgame Perfect Implementation: An Empirical Investigation

    Open AccessPhilippe Aghion, Ernst Fehr et al.ARTICLESSRN Electronic Journal2015

  • The Role of Bounded Rationality and Imperfect Information in Subgame Perfect Implementation: An Empirical Investigation

    Open AccessPhilippe Aghion, Ernst Fehr et al.ARTICLESSRN Electronic Journal2015

  • On the psychology of poverty

    Open AccessJohannes Haushofer, Ernst FehrARTICLEScience2014

    Poverty remains one of the most pressing problems facing the world; the mechanisms through which poverty arises and perpetuates itself, however, are not well understood. Here, we examine the evidence for the hypothesis that poverty may have particular psychological consequences that can lead to economic behaviors that make it difficult to escape poverty. The evidence indicates that poverty causes stress and negative affective states which in turn…

  • Business culture and dishonesty in the banking industry

    Open AccessAlain Cohn, Ernst Fehr et al.ARTICLENature2014

  • Can we see inside? Predicting strategic behavior given limited information

    Open AccessSonja Vogt, C Efferson et al.ARTICLEEvolution and Human Behavior2013

  • Discretion, Productivity, and Work Satisfaction

    Björn Bartling, Ernst Fehr et al.ARTICLEJournal of Institutional and…2013

    In Bartling, Fehr, and Schmidt (2012) we show theoretically and experimentally that it is optimal to grant discretion to workers if (i) discretion increases productivity, (ii) workers can be screened by past performance, (iii) some workers reciprocate high wages with high effort, and (iv) employers pay high wages leaving rents to their workers. In this paper we show experimentally that the productivity increase due to discretion is not only suffi…

  • Explaining altruistic behaviour in humans

    Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowle et al.CHAPTEROxford handbook of evolutionary…2012

    This article presents evidence supporting strong reciprocity. It explains why, under conditions plausibly characteristic of the early stages of human evolution, a small fraction of strong reciprocators could invade a population of self-regarding types, and why strong reciprocity is an evolutionarily stable strategy. It uses the term ‘self-regarding’ rather than the more common term ‘self-interested’ to avoid the question as to whether it is selfi…

  • The role of testosterone in social interaction

    Open AccessChristoph Eisenegger, Johannes Haushofer et al.ARTICLETrends in Cognitive Sciences2011

    Although animal researchers established the role of testosterone as a 'social hormone' decades ago, the investigation of its causal influence on human social behaviors has only recently begun. Here, we review and discuss recent studies showing the causal effects of testosterone on social interactions in animals and humans, and outline the basic neurobiological mechanisms that might underlie these effects. Based on these recent findings, we argue …