Science is a winner-take-all profession in which only few contributions get excessive attention and the large majority of papers_new remains receives scant or no attention. This so-called ‘waste’ together with all the competitive strategies of scientists seeking attention is part and parcel...

In this paper we argue that authorities aid cooperation by means ofdirect coordination or the enforcement of re-commitment devices suchas contract laws.Credible threats of violence allow this role. In alocal interaction model, an authority forms if mutually connected individuals with sufficient...

This paper examines the consequences of creating a fully competitive market in a sector previously dominated by a cost-minimizing public firm. Workers in the economy are heterogeneous in their intrinsic motivation to work in the sector. In line with empirical findings, our model implies that...

Highway construction occurs nowadays mainly through widening of existing roads rather than building new roads. This paper documents that highway widenings considerably reduce congestion in the short run, defined here as 6 years. Using longitudinal microdata from highway detector loops in the...

Why do people leave high-income countries with extensive welfare states? This article will examine what underlies the emigration intentions of native-born inhabitants of one industrialized country in particular: the Netherlands. To understand emigration from high-income countries we focus not...

We evaluate the impact of technology adoption subsidies on in- vestment behavior in an individual choice experiment. In a laboratory setting professional managers are confronted with an intertemporal decision problem in which they have to decide whether or not to search for, and possibly adopt,...

This paper studies patenting decisions by firms in relation to the negotiation and signing of the Helsinki and Oslo protocol as part of the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution. We use a uniquely constructed patent data set on SO2 abatement technologies filed in 15 signatory and...

A simple auction-theoretic framework is used to examine symmetric litigation environments where the legal ownership of a disputed asset is unknown to the court. The court observes only the quality of the case presented by each party, and awards the asset to the party presenting the best case....

This paper considers a simple Continuous Beliefs System (CBS) toinvestigate the effects on price dynamics of several behavioralassumptions: (i) herd behaviour; (ii) a-synchronous updating ofbeliefs; and (iii) heterogeneity in time horizons (memory) amongagents. The recently introduced concept of...

This paper addresses the issue of the choice of the optimalinstrument to sell new shares, this choice being price versusquantity discrimination (rationing). Previous results in theliterature (Benveniste and Wilhelm, 1990) show that the issuing firmwould be better off if allowed to use both price...