There are three essays assembled in this doctoral thesis. They are titled "Markets wanted: the overshooting of competition beliefs in transition countries", "Preferences for Redistribution around the World" and "Income Inequality and Symbolic Values: an exploratory analysis" and are all single authored. All essays are based on the premise that economic agents make their choices within some kind of social structure. In the first essay on competition beliefs during transition, this structure only

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... consists of shared information. The second essay analyses the determinants of preferences for redistribution. It is implicitly assumed that individual self-interest and social structure, both, determine individual preferences for redistribution. Concerns for social status, altruism, information about social mobility, fairness considerations and moral evaluations are shown to have a statistical relation with preferences for redistribution. The third essay undertakes an explorative analysis of the relation between symbolic values and the income distribution. The analysis is motivated by the implicit assumption that symbolic values are important elements in a multitude of economic decisions. Symbolic values correlate with individual choices across generations and/or across individuals. The notion of symbolic values goes back to Corneo (2010) and Corneo and Jeanne (2009, 2010). They provide a theoretical approach to tackle questions of endogenous preference formation while side-stepping methodological problems typically arising in the treatment of preference formation. More precisely, the theory of symbolic values succeeds in endogenizing individuals' value systems and simultaneously allows for welfare judgments based on the Pareto-criterion. 1\. "Markets Wanted – The overshooting of competition beliefs in transition economies" The first paper relates to the literature on economic transition, on media capture and on the socialist legacy. It documents and rationalizes the overly optimistic embrace of market competition at the b [...]