This paper studies the effect of leadership on the level and evolution of pro-social behavior using an artefactual field experiment on local public good provision. Participants decide how much to contribute to an actual conservation project. They can then revise their donations after being...

States are ill equipped to meet the challenges of a globalized world. The concept of citizenship with its rights and obligations, including the allegiance owed, is too narrowly defined to exist only between individuals and a state. Today, people identify with, and pay allegiance to, many...

At present, new EU-members have to fully accept the "acquis communautaire" even if their economic and institutional development differs drastically from the EU-average. In contrast, we propose that there should be the possibility of partial entry into the EU. East European Countries should have...

Politik und öffentliches Bewusstsein werden zunehmend durch ökonomische Theorien und Handlungsvorschläge mitbestimmt. Kaum ein anderes erkenntnis- und handlungsleitendes Modell hat daher einen vergleichbaren Einfluss wie das Konzept des Homo Oeconomicus. Durch die Entwicklung experimenteller...

We normally take it for granted: a government or state has its corresponding territory. This paper shows that government need not have a territorial monopoly. The paper advances a practical, constitutional proposal, based on the notion that there are meaningful government units, whose major...

During the last two decades economists have made much progress in understanding incentives, contracts and organisations. Yet, they constrained their attention to a very narrow and empirically questionable view of human motivation. The purpose of this paper is to show that this narrow view of...

I study the effect of fatigue and innate ability on performance in a model with incomplete contracts, lumpy tasks requiring multiple periods of work and stochastic productivity shocks. I find that increasing ability or reducing fatigue does not lead necessarily to more productive efficiency,...

It is shown that rent-seeking contests with continuous and independent type distributions possess a unique pure-strategy Nash equilibrium.

Das Geschehen auf den Finanzmärkten hängt vom individuellen Verhalten ab, wird aber auch wesentlich bestimmt durch die Ausgestaltung des Finanzsystems, das heisst durch die Rollen, die den einzelnen Akteure zugewiesen werden, und durch die Regeln für die Interaktion der verschiedenen Rollen....

In recent years, many social scientists have claimed that trust plays an important role in economic and social transactions. Despite its proposed importance, the measurement and the definition of trust seem to be not fully settled, and the identification of the exact role of trust in economic...