Prof. Dr. Armin Falk

Current Positions and Affiliations

• University of Bonn
  Professor of Economics, Institute for Applied Microeconomics (2003–present)
  Director, BonnEconLab—Laboratory for Experimental Economics (2004–present)

• Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)
  Research Fellow, Political Economy Programme (2022–present)
  Research Fellow, Labour Economics Programme (1999–present)

• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
  Research Affiliate (2021–present)

• Econometric Society
  Fellow (2021–present)

• Economic Research on Identity, Norms and Narratives (ERINN)
  Associate Fellow (2019–present)

• Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
  IP Leader (2013–present)

• Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics
  External Scientific Member (2009–present)

• German Institute for Economic Research (DIW)
  Research Fellow (2006–present)

• Center for Economic Studies (CESifo)
  Fellow (2000–present)

Research Interests

• Determinants and consequences of time, risk and social preferences
• Behavioral economics of climate change
• Sources of inequality
• Early-childhood development
• Malleability of moral behavior

Grants and Awards

• Armin Falk has received two ERC grants and was awarded the Gossen Prize in 2008, the Leibniz Prize in 2009, as well as the Yrjö Jahnsson Award in 2011.

• As organizer or keynote speaker, Falk has been involved in numerous conferences and summer schools.

• He is Fellow of the European Economic Association and the Econometric Society. He is also the Director of the Bonn Laboratory for Experimental Economics (BonnEconLab) and affiliated with J-PAL, Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), CESifo, and the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics.

Working Papers

• The Origins of Gender Differences in Competitiveness and Earnings Expectations: Causal Evidence from a Mentoring Intervention
  IZA Discussion Paper 14800, Oct. 2021
  Boneva, T., Buser, T., Falk, A. & Kosse, F.

• Herding, Warfare, and a Culture of Honor: Global Evidence
  NBER Working Paper 29250, September 2021
  Cao, Y., Enke, B., Falk, A., Giuliano, P., Nunn, N.

• What’s worth knowing? Economists’ opinions about economics
  July 2025
  Andre, P. & Falk, A.

• Ends versus Means: Kantians, Utilitarians, and Moral Decisions
  NBER Working Paper 32073, January 2024
  Bénabou, R., Falk, A., Henkel, L.

• Narratives, Imperatives, and Moral Reasoning
  NBER Working Paper 24798, July 2018
  Bénabou, R., Falk, A. & Tirole, J.

• Eliciting Moral Preferences under Image Concerns: Theory and Experiment
  September 2024
  Bénabou, R., Falk, A., Henkel, L. & Tirole, J.

• Limited Self-knowledge and Survey Response Behavior
  IZA Discussion Paper 14526; updated manuscript: July 2025
  Falk, A., Henkel, L., Neuber, T. & Strack, P.

Publications

Book

• Armin Falk’s book “Warum es so schwer ist, ein guter Mensch zu sein” is available in German from Siedler … and in Korean.

Journal Articles

• Misperceived Social Norms and Willingness to Act Against Climate Change
  Review of Economics and Statistics
  Andre, P., Boneva, T., Chopra, F., Falk, A. (forthcoming)

• Mentoring and Schooling Decisions: Causal Evidence
  Journal of Political Economy, 134(1), 366–396
  Falk, A., Kosse, F. & Pinger, P. (January 2026)

• Malleability of preferences for honesty
  Economic Journal, 135(667), 982–998
  Abeler, J. Falk, A. & Kosse, F. (2025)

• Communicating through Defaults
  Review of Economics and Statistics, 107(1), 256–268.
  Altmann, S., Falk, A. & Grunewald, A. (2025)

• Does a single dose of testosterone increase willingness to compete, confidence, and risk-taking in men? Evidence from two randomised placebo-controlled experiments
  Hormones and Behavior, 166, Article 105659
  Nadler, A., Wibral, M., Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Previtero, A., Weber, B., Camerer, C., Dreber, A., Nave, G. (2024)

• Attention and Dread: Experimental Evidence on Preferences for Information [working paper version]
  Management Science, 70(10), 6483–7343
  Falk, A., & Zimmermann, F. (2024)

• Globally Representative Evidence on the Actual and Perceived Support for Climate Action
  Nature Climate Change, 14, 253–259
  Andre, P., Boneva, T., Chopra, F., Falk, A. (2024)

• Intertemporal Altruism [working paper version]
  American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 16(1),  329–357
  Chopra, F., Falk, A. & Graeber, T. (2024)

• Self-assessment: The role of the social environment
  Journal of Public Economics, 223, Article 104908
  Falk, A., Kosse, F., Schildberg-Hörisch, H., Zimmermann, F. (2023) 

• The Preference Survey Module: A Validated Instrument for Measuring Risk, Time, and Social Preferences
  Management Science, 69(4), 1935–1950
  Falk, A., Becker, A., Dohmen, T. J., Huffman, D., & Sunde, U. (2023) 

• Patience and Comparative Development
  Review of Economic Studies, 89(5), 2806–2840
  Sunde, U., Dohmen, T., Enke, B., Falk, A., Huffman, D., & Meyerheim, G. (2021). 

• Facing yourself – A Note on self-image
  Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 186, 724–734
  Falk, A. (2021).

• Socioeconomic Status and Inequalities in Children’s IQ and Economic Preferences
  Journal of Political Economy, 129(9), 2504–2545
  Falk, A., Kosse, F., Pinger, P., Schildberg-Hörisch, H., & Deckers, T. (2021)

• The development of egalitarian norm enforcement in childhood and adolescence
  Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 179, 667–680
  Bašić, Z., Falk, A., & Kosse, F. (2020)

• Diffusion of Being Pivotal and Immoral Outcomes
  Review of Economic Studies, 87(5), 2205–2229
  Falk, A., Neuber, T., & Szech, N. (2020)

• Ten considerations for effectively managing the COVID-19 transition
  Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 677–687
  Habersaat, K., Betsch, C., Danchin, M., Sunstein, C., Böhm, R., Falk, A., Brewer, N. T., Omer, S. B., Scherzer, M., Sah, S., Fischer, E. F., Scheel, A. E., Fancourt, D., Kitayama, S., Dubé, E., Leask, J., Dutta, M., MacDonald, N. E., Temkina, A., Lieberoth, A., Jackson, M., Lewandowsky, S., Seale, H., Fietje, N., Schmid, P., Gelfand, M., Korn, L., Eitze, S., Felgendreff, L., Sprengholz, P., Salvi, C., & Butler, R. (2020). 

• Re-Revisiting the marshmallow test: A direct comparison of studies by Shoda, Mischel, and Peake (1990) and Watts, Duncan, and Quan (2018)
  Psychological Science, 31(1), 100–104
  Falk, A., Pinger, P., & Kosse, F. (2020)

• The Formation of Prosociality: Causal Evidence on the Role of Social Environment
  Journal of Political Economy, 128(2), 434–467
  Kosse, F., Deckers, T., Pinger, P., Schildberg-Hörisch, H., & Falk, A. (2020)

• Defaults and donations: Evidence from a field experiment
  Review of Economics and Statistics, 101(5), 808–826
  Altmann, S., Falk, A., Heidhues, P., Jayaraman, R., & Teirlinck, M. (2019)

• Global evidence on economic preferences
  Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(4), 1645–1692
  Falk, A., Becker, A., Dohmen, T., Enke, B., Huffman, D., & Sunde, U. (2018)

• Relationship of gender differences in preferences to economic development and gender equality
  Science, 362(6412), Article eaas9899.
  Falk, A., & Hermle, J. (2018)

• Risk attitudes across the life course
  Economic Journal, 127(605), F95–F116
  Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Golsteyn, B., Huffman, D., & Sunde, U. (2017)

• Nominal or real? The impact of regional price levels on satisfaction with life
  B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, 16(3), 1337–1358
  Deckers, T., Falk, A., & Schildberg-Hörisch, H. (2016)

• Institutions and morals: A reply
  European Journal of Political Economy, 40(B), 391–394
  Falk, A., & Szech, N. (2015)

• Neural patterns underlying social comparisons of personal performance
  Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 10(4), 569–576
  Lindner, M., Rudorf, S., Birg, R., Falk, A., Weber, B., & Fliessbach, K. (2015)

• Institutions and contract enforcement
  Journal of Labor Economics, 33(3), 571–590
  Falk, A., Huffman, D., & MacLeod, W. B. (2015)

• Representative evidence on lying costs
  Journal of Public Economics, 113, 96–104
  Abeler, J., Becker, A., & Falk, A. (2014)

• Effort increases sensitivity to reward and loss magnitude in the human brain
  Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9(3), 342–349
  Lallement, J. H., Kuss, K., Trautner, P., Weber, B., Falk, A., & Fliessbach, K. (2014)

• Contractual incompleteness, unemployment, and labor market segmentation
  Review of Economic Studies, 81(1), 30–56
  Altmann, S., Falk, A., Grunewald, A., & Huffman, D. (2014)

• The systematic place of morals in markets—Response
  Science, 341(6147), 714
  Falk, A., & Szech, N. (2013)

• Validating an ultra-short survey measure of patience
  Economics Letters, 120(2), 142–145
  Vischer, T., Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Huffman, D., Schupp, J., Sunde, U., & Wagner, G. G. (2013)

• Do lab experiments misrepresent social preferences? The case of self-selected student samples
  Journal of the European Economic Association, 11(4), 839–852
  Falk, A., Meier, S., & Zehnder, C. (2013)

• Morals and Markets
  Science, 340(6133), 707–711
  Falk, A., & Szech, N. (2013)

• A city-wide experiment on trust discrimination
  Journal of Public Economics, 100, 15–27
  Falk, A., & Zehnder, C. (2013)

• A taste for consistency and survey response behavior
  CESifo Economic Studies, 59(1), 181–193
  Falk, A., & Zimmermann, F. (2013)

• No evidence for an effect of testosterone administration on delay discounting in male university students
  Psychoneuroendocrinology 38(9), 1814–1818
  Ortner, G. R., Wibral, M., Becker, A., Dohmen, T., Klingmüller, D., Falk, A., & Weber, B. (2013)

• A reward prediction error for charitable donations reveals outcome orientation of donators
  Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(2), 216–223
  Kuss, K., Falk, A., Trautner, P., Elger, C. E., Weber, B., & Fliessbach, K. (2013)

• Living in two neighborhoods—Social interaction effects in the laboratory
  Economic Inquiry, 51(1), 563–578
  Falk, A., Fischbacher, U., & Gächter, S. (2013)

• Testosterone administration reduces lying in men
  PLoS One, 11(3)
  Wibral, M., Dohmen, T., Klingmüller, D., Weber, B., & Falk, A. (2012)

• It’s all about connections: Evidence on network formation
  Review of Network Economics, 11(3)
  Falk, A., & Kosfeld, M. (2012)

• The relationship between economic preferences and psychological personality measures
  Annual Review of Economics, 4, 453–478
  Becker, A., Deckers, T., Dohmen, T., Falk, A., & Kosse, F. (2012)

• Competition and relational contracts: The role of unemployment as a disciplinary device
  Journal of the European Economic Association, 10(4), 887–907
  Brown, M., Falk, A., & Fehr, E. (2012)

• The intergenerational transmission of risk and trust attitudes
  Review of Economic Studies, 79(2), 645–677
  Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Huffman, D., & Sunde, U. (2012)

• Promotions and incentives: The case of multistage elimination tournaments
  Journal of Labor Economics, 30(1), 149–174
  Altmann, S., Falk, A., & Wibral, M. (2012)

• Individual risk attitudes: Measurement, determinants, and behavioral consequences
  Journal of the European Economic Association, 9(3), 522–550
  Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Huffman, D., Sunde, U., Schupp, J., & Wagner, G. G. (2011)

• Unemployment and right�?wing extremist crime
  Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 113(2), 260–285
  Falk, A., Kuhn, A., & Zweimüller, J. (2011)

• Relative versus absolute income, joy of winning, and gender: Brain imaging evidence
  Journal of Public Economics, 95(3-4), 279–285
  Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Fliessbach, K., Sunde, U., & Weber, B. (2011)

• You get what you pay for: Incentives and selection in the education system
  Economic Journal, 120(546), F256–F271
  Dohmen, T., & Falk, A. (2010)

• Direct evidence on risk attitudes and migration
  Review of Economics and Statistics, 92(3), 684–689
  Jaeger, D. A., Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Huffman, D., Sunde, U., & Bonin, H. (2010)

• Biased probability judgment: Evidence of incidence and relationship to economic outcomes from a representative sample
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 72(3), 903–915
  Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Huffman, D., Marklein, F., & Sunde, U. (2009)

• Lab experiments are a major source of knowledge in the social sciences
  Science, 326(5952), 535–538
  Falk, A., & Heckman, J. J. (2009)

• Homo reciprocans: Survey evidence on behavioural outcomes
  Economic Journal, 119(536), 592–612
  Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Huffman, D., & Sunde, U. (2009)

• Experimental labor economics
  The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, Second Edition
  Falk, A., & Gächter, S. (2008)

• Testing theories of fairness—Intentions matter
  Games and Economic Behavior, 62(1), 287–303
  Falk, A., Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2008)

• Representative trust and reciprocity: Prevalence and determinants
  Economic Inquiry, 46(1), 84–90
  Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Huffman, D., & Sunde, U. (2008)

• Cross-sectional earnings risk and occupational sorting: The role of risk attitudes
  Labour Economics, 14(6), 926–937
  Bonin, H., Dohmen, T., Falk, A., Huffman, D., & Sunde, U. (2007)

• Social comparison affects reward-related brain activity in the human ventral striatum
  Science, 318(5854), 1305–1308
  Fliessbach, K., Weber, B., Trautner, P., Dohmen, T., Sunde, U., Elger, C. E., & Falk, A. (2007)

• Gift exchange in the field
  Econometrica, 75(5), 1501–1511
  Falk, A. (2007)

• Studying labor market institutions in the lab: Minimum wages, employment protection, and workfare
  Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 163(1), 30–45
  Falk, A., & Huffman, D. (2007)

• The Hidden Costs of Control
  American Economic Review, 96(5): 1611–1630
  Falk, A., & Kosfeld, M. (2006)

• Fairness perceptions and reservation wages: The behavioral effects of minimum wage laws
  Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(4), 1347–1381
  Falk, A., Fehr, E., & Zehnder, C. (2006)

• Clean evidence on peer effects
  Journal of Labor Economics, 24(1), 39–57
  Falk, A., & Ichino, A. (2006)

• The success of job applications: A new approach to program evaluation
  Labour Economics, 12(6), 739–748
  Falk, A., Lalive, R., & Zweimüller, J. (2005)

• Driving forces behind informal sanctions
  Econometrica, 73(6), 2017–2030
  Falk, A., Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2005)

• Choosing the Joneses: Endogenous goals and reference standards
  Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 106(3), 417–435
  Falk, A., & Knell, M. (2004)

• Relational contracts and the nature of market interactions
  Econometrica, 72(3), 747–780
  Brown, M., Falk, A., & Fehr, E. (2004)

• Why labour market experiments?
  Labour Economics, 10(4), 399–406
  Falk, A., & Fehr, E. (2003)

• Reasons for conflict: Lessons from bargaining experiments
  Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, 159(1), 171–187
  Falk, A., Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003)

• On the nature of fair behavior
  Economic Inquiry, 41(1), 20–26
  Falk, A., Fehr, E., & Fischbacher, U. (2003)

• “Crime” in the lab—detecting social interaction
  European Economic Review, 46(4–5), 859–869
  Falk, A., & Fischbacher, U. (2002)

• Psychological foundations of incentives
  European Economic Review, 46(4–5), 687–724
  Fehr, E., & Falk, A. (2002)

• Reputation and reciprocity: Consequences for the labour relation
  Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 104(1), 1–26
  Gächter, S., & Falk, A. (2002)

• Distributional consequences and intentions in a model of reciprocity
  Annales d'Economie et de Statistique, 63/64, 111–129
  Falk, A., & Fischbacher, U. (2001)

• Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic incentives in a repeated game with incomplete contracts
  Journal of Economic Psychology, 20(3), 251–284
  Falk, A., Gächter, S., & Kovács, J. (1999)

• Wage Rigidity in a Competitive Incomplete Contract Market
  Journal of Political Economy, 107(1), 106–134
  Fehr, E., & Falk, A. (1999)