Behavioral Economics, Experimental Economics, Cooperation in Groups, Pro-Environmental Behavior

Sebastian Kube is Professor of Behavioral and Experimental Economics at the University of Bonn. He is an Investigator at ECONtribute and serves as Vice Director of the Institute for Applied Microeconomics (IAME) and the BonnEconLab; he is also affiliated with the Center for Economics & Neuroscience (CENs) and is a Research Fellow at IZA. Previously, he was Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn (2007–2025). His research uses laboratory and field experiments to study how social preferences shape economic behavior—especially cooperation in groups, incentives and sanctions in social dilemmas, rule-following, and pro-environmental behavior.

Published papers

• Maintaining Cooperation through Vertical Communication of Trust when Removing Sanctions

  Posten, A. C., Uğurlar, P., Kube, S., & Lammers, J. (2025). Maintaining cooperation through vertical communication of trust when removing sanctions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(12), e2415010122.

Discussion papers

• Cooperation and Coordination When Others May Use AI

• When Needs Change Norms: Experimental Evidence that Income Shocks Undermine Norm-Driven Cooperation in Forest Commons

• AI Versus Humans as Authority Figures: Evidence from a Rule-Compliance Experiment

• The Resilience of Rule Compliance in a Polarized Society

• Maintaining Cooperation through Vertical Communication of Trust when Removing Sanctions