Simon Gächter

36.9k total citations · 9 hit papers
110 papers, 21.0k citations indexed

About

Simon Gächter is a scholar working on Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science and Demography. According to data from OpenAlex, Simon Gächter has authored 110 papers receiving a total of 21.0k indexed citations (citations by other indexed papers that have themselves been cited), including 95 papers in Safety Research, 49 papers in Sociology and Political Science and 36 papers in Demography. Recurrent topics in Simon Gächter's work include Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (95 papers), Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (36 papers) and Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (33 papers). Simon Gächter is often cited by papers focused on Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (95 papers), Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (36 papers) and Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (33 papers). Simon Gächter collaborates with scholars based in United Kingdom, Germany and Switzerland. Simon Gächter's co-authors include Ernst Fehr, Urs Fischbacher, Benedikt Herrmann, Christian Thöni, Elke Renner, Martín Sefton, Georg Kirchsteiger, Armin Falk, Jonathan Schulz and Arno Riedl and has published in prestigious journals such as Nature, Science and Nature Communications.

In The Last Decade

Simon Gächter

108 papers receiving 19.8k citations

Hit Papers

Altruistic punishment in humans 1997 2026 2006 2016 2002 2000 2000 2001 2008 1000 2.0k 3.0k
What are hit papers?

Hit papers significantly outperform the citation benchmark for their cohort. A paper qualifies if it has ≥500 total citations, achieves ≥1.5× the top-1% citation threshold for papers in the same subfield and year (this is the minimum needed to enter the top 1%, not the average within it), or reaches the top citation threshold in at least one of its specific research topics.

  1. Altruistic punishment in humans
    2002 3.5k citations Ernst Fehr, Simon Gächter Nature profile →
  2. Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments
    2000 2.7k citations Ernst Fehr, Simon Gächter American Economic Review profile →
  3. Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity
    2000 2.0k citations Ernst Fehr, Simon Gächter profile →
  4. Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment
    2001 1.8k citations Urs Fischbacher, Simon Gächter et al. profile →
  5. Antisocial Punishment Across Societies
    2008 1.3k citations Benedikt Herrmann, Christian Thöni et al. profile →
  6. Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments
    2010 832 citations Urs Fischbacher, Simon Gächter American Economic Review profile →
  7. Reciprocity as a Contract Enforcement Device: Experimental Evidence
    1997 672 citations Ernst Fehr, Simon Gächter et al. profile →
  8. Intrinsic honesty and the prevalence of rule violations across societies
    2016 339 citations Simon Gächter, Jonathan Schulz Nature profile →
  9. Conducting interactive experiments online
    2017 227 citations Simon Gächter et al. Experimental Economics profile →

Peers — A (Enhanced Table)

Peers by citation overlap · career bar shows stage (early→late) cites · hero ref

Name h Career Trend Papers Cites
Simon Gächter United Kingdom 53 14.2k 10.5k 4.9k 4.7k 2.9k 110 21.0k
Urs Fischbacher Germany 48 15.2k 1.1× 9.2k 0.9× 6.0k 1.2× 4.3k 0.9× 5.0k 1.7× 142 26.3k
Uri Gneezy United States 54 10.8k 0.8× 6.2k 0.6× 6.9k 1.4× 2.6k 0.6× 2.2k 0.8× 145 22.8k
Armin Falk Germany 58 8.9k 0.6× 5.8k 0.5× 7.1k 1.4× 3.1k 0.7× 1.9k 0.6× 208 19.5k
James Andreoni United States 46 9.2k 0.6× 6.9k 0.7× 7.4k 1.5× 2.6k 0.6× 1.2k 0.4× 83 18.0k
Samuel Bowles United States 61 5.9k 0.4× 10.8k 1.0× 5.1k 1.0× 2.6k 0.6× 1.6k 0.6× 195 20.0k
Gary Charness United States 53 7.4k 0.5× 3.6k 0.3× 3.6k 0.7× 2.0k 0.4× 1.3k 0.4× 200 12.5k
Herbert Gintis United States 52 5.4k 0.4× 10.1k 1.0× 3.5k 0.7× 2.0k 0.4× 1.6k 0.6× 186 18.1k
Kevin McCabe United States 36 5.8k 0.4× 3.5k 0.3× 2.2k 0.5× 1.7k 0.4× 2.2k 0.8× 101 10.5k
Aldo Rustichini United States 52 4.3k 0.3× 2.7k 0.3× 5.0k 1.0× 1.1k 0.2× 1.8k 0.6× 204 12.9k
Rachel Croson United States 50 5.1k 0.4× 3.8k 0.4× 3.3k 0.7× 1.5k 0.3× 619 0.2× 111 12.4k

Countries citing papers authored by Simon Gächter

Since Specialization
Citations

This map shows the geographic impact of Simon Gächter's research. It shows the number of citations coming from papers published by authors working in each country. You can also color the map by specialization and compare the number of citations received by Simon Gächter with the expected number of citations based on a country's size and research output (numbers larger than one mean the country cites Simon Gächter more than expected).

Fields of papers citing papers by Simon Gächter

Since Specialization
Physical SciencesHealth SciencesLife SciencesSocial Sciences

This network shows the impact of papers produced by Simon Gächter. Nodes represent research fields, and links connect fields that are likely to share authors. Colored nodes show fields that tend to cite the papers produced by Simon Gächter. The network helps show where Simon Gächter may publish in the future.

Co-authorship network of co-authors of Simon Gächter

This figure shows the co-authorship network connecting the top 25 collaborators of Simon Gächter. A scholar is included among the top collaborators of Simon Gächter based on the total number of citations received by their joint publications. Widths of edges represent the number of papers authors have co-authored together. Node borders signify the number of papers an author published with Simon Gächter. Simon Gächter is excluded from the visualization to improve readability, since they are connected to all nodes in the network.

All Works

20 of 20 papers shown
1.
Gächter, Simon, Lucas Molleman, & Daniele Nosenzo. (2025). Why people follow rules. Nature Human Behaviour. 9(7). 1342–1354. 3 indexed citations
2.
Balafoutas, Loukas, Eugen Dimant, Simon Gächter, & Erin L. Krupka. (2024). Social norms: Enforcement, breakdown & polarization. European Economic Review. 170. 104885–104885. 1 indexed citations
3.
Gächter, Simon, et al.. (2024). Social preferences and the variability of conditional cooperation. Economic Theory. 81(1-2). 341–366. 2 indexed citations
4.
Starmer, Chris, et al.. (2024). Introducing IOS11 as an extended interactive version of the ‘Inclusion of Other in the Self’ scale to estimate relationship closeness. Scientific Reports. 14(1). 8901–8901. 1 indexed citations
5.
Chuah, Swee‐Hoon, Simon Gächter, Robert Hoffmann, & Jonathan H. W. Tan. (2023). Who discriminates? Evidence from a trust game experiment across three societies. Journal of Economic Psychology. 97. 102630–102630. 4 indexed citations
6.
Gächter, Simon, Chris Starmer, & Fabio Tufano. (2023). Measuring Group Cohesion to Reveal the Power of Social Relationships in Team Production. The Review of Economics and Statistics. 107(2). 539–554. 5 indexed citations
7.
İşler, Ozan, Simon Gächter, A. John Maule, & Chris Starmer. (2021). Contextualised strong reciprocity explains selfless cooperation despite selfish intuitions and weak social heuristics. Scientific Reports. 11(1). 13868–13868. 25 indexed citations
8.
Gächter, Simon, et al.. (2020). LIONESS Lab: a free web-based platform for conducting interactive experiments online. UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam). 6(1). 95–111. 53 indexed citations
9.
Gächter, Simon, Leonie Gerhards, & Daniele Nosenzo. (2017). The importance of peers for compliance with norms of fair sharing. European Economic Review. 97. 72–86. 60 indexed citations
10.
Gächter, Simon & Jonathan Schulz. (2016). Intrinsic honesty and the prevalence of rule violations across societies. Nature. 531(7595). 496–499. 339 indexed citations breakdown →
11.
Gächter, Simon, Chris Starmer, & Fabio Tufano. (2015). Measuring the Closeness of Relationships: A Comprehensive Evaluation of the 'Inclusion of the Other in the Self' Scale. PLoS ONE. 10(6). e0129478–e0129478. 189 indexed citations
12.
Gächter, Simon, Lingbo Huang, & Martín Sefton. (2015). Combining “real effort” with induced effort costs: the ball-catching task. Experimental Economics. 19(4). 687–712. 42 indexed citations
13.
Kölle, Felix, Simon Gächter, & Simone Quercia. (2014). The ABC of Cooperation in Voluntary Contribution and Common Pool Extraction Games. RePEc: Research Papers in Economics. 1 indexed citations
14.
Gächter, Simon, Benedikt Herrmann, & Christian Thöni. (2010). Culture and cooperation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences. 365(1553). 2651–2661. 229 indexed citations
15.
Falk, Armin, Urs Fischbacher, & Simon Gächter. (2003). Living in Two Neighborhoods - Social Interactions in the Lab. Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich). 7 indexed citations
16.
Fehr, Ernst & Simon Gächter. (2002). Altruistic punishment in humans. Nature. 415(6868). 137–140. 3469 indexed citations breakdown →
17.
Falkinger, Josef, Ernst Fehr, Simon Gächter, & Rudolf Winter‐Ebmer. (2000). A Simple Mechanism for the Efficient Provision of Public Goods: Experimental Evidence. American Economic Review. 90(1). 247–264. 240 indexed citations
18.
Anderhub, Vital, Simon Gächter, & Manfred Königstein. (2000). Efficient contracting and fair play in a simple principal-agent experiment. Experimental Economics. 5(1). 5–27. 60 indexed citations
19.
Gächter, Simon & Ernst Fehr. (1997). Social Norms as a Social Exchange. Zeitschrift für schweizerische Statistik und Volkswirtschaft/Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft und Statistik/Swiss journal of economics and statistics. 133. 275–292. 7 indexed citations
20.
Kirchsteiger, Georg, Ernst Fehr, & Simon Gächter. (1996). Reciprocal fairness and noncompensating wage differentials. 152(4). 608–640. 49 indexed citations

Rankless uses publication and citation data sourced from OpenAlex, an open and comprehensive bibliographic database. While OpenAlex provides broad and valuable coverage of the global research landscape, it—like all bibliographic datasets—has inherent limitations. These include incomplete records, variations in author disambiguation, differences in journal indexing, and delays in data updates. As a result, some metrics and network relationships displayed in Rankless may not fully capture the entirety of a scholar's output or impact.

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