We propose a theory of choices that are influenced by the psychological state of the agent. The central hypothesis is that the psychological state controls the urgency of the attributes sought by the decision maker in the available alternatives. While state dependent choice is less restricted...

Classical definitions of complementarity are based on cross price elasticities, and so they do not apply, for example, when goods are free. This context includes many relevant cases such as online newspapers and public attractions. We look for a complementarity notion that does not rely on price...

Non-formal education programmes are active in a number of developing countries. These programmes offer vulnerable students an opportunity to pursue their education although they were excluded for various reasons from the formal education systems. This paper examines the impact of two programmes...

One of the striking aspects of recent sovereign debt restructurings is, conditional on default, delay length is positively correlated with the size of 'haircut', which is size of creditor losses. In this paper, we develop an incomplete information model of debt restructuring where the prospect...

The unconditional expectation of social welfare is often used to assess alternative macroeconomic policy rules in applied quantitative research. It is shown that it is generally possible to derive a linear-quadratic problem that approximates the exact non-linear problem where the unconditional...

We first confirm previous results with the German Socio-Economic Panel by Layard et al. (2010), and obtain strong negative effects of comparison income. However, when we split the sample by age, we find quite different results for reference income. The effects on life- satisfaction are positive...

We analyse the optimal design of climate change policies when a government wants to encourage the private sector to undertake significant immediate investment in developing cleaner technologies, but the relevant carbon taxes (or other environmental policies) that would incentivise such...

In the mid-1940s, American film industry was on its way up to its golden era as studios started mass-producing iconic feature films. The escalating increase in popularity of Hollywood stars was actively suggested for its direct links to box office success by academics. Using data collected in...

We study the functional specialization whereby some countries contribute relatively more inventors vs. organizations in the production of inventions at a global scale. We propose a conceptual framework to explain this type of functional specialization, which posits the presence of feedbacks...

This paper critically examines a number of issues relating to the measurement of tax complexity. It starts with an analysis of the concept of tax complexity, distinguishing tax design complexity and operational complexity. It considers the consequences/costs of complexity, and then examines the...