infonet-economy

In this paper we show that a simple model of reciprocal preferences explains major experimental regularities of common pool resource (CPR) experiments. The evidence indicates that in standard CPR games without communication and without sanctioning possibilities inefficient excess appropriation is the rule. However, when communication or informal sanctions are available appropriation…

"This paper advances two propositions, one concerning content, the other concerning research strategy.n(1) The advent of wide-spread internet publishing reduces the stifling impact of the refereeing process on the papers accepted and submitted to journals. Economics scholars are less bound to devoting a large part of their time and effort on formalisms. They have more leeway to…

"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 the option of specifically entering with respect to functions…

"The purpose of this paper is to explain why some markets for financial products take off while others vanish as soon as they have emerged. To this end, we model an infinite sequence of CAPM-economies in which financial products can be used for insurance purposes. Agents' participation in these financial products, however, is restricted. Consecutive stage economies are…

This paper recasts Temin's (1976) question of whether monetary forces caused the Great Depression in a modern time series framework. We evaluate the effects of monetary policy against nonmonetary alternatives in a Bayesian updating framework with time-varying parameters. The predictive power of monetary policy for output is very small for the early phase of the depression and…

"A growing economic literature recognizes and deals with the fact that economic agents' utility and well-being is not solely determined by absolute achievements, but also by achievements relative to a reference standard or reference group. In this literature it is assumed that the reference standard is completely exogenous. Social psychologists have questioned the exogenous…

We study the employment and distributional effects of regulating (reducing) working time in a general equilibrium model with search-matching frictions. Job creation entails fixed costs, but existing jobs are subject to diminishing returns. We characterize the equilibrium in the de-regulated economy where firms and individual workers freely negotiate wages and hours. Then, we consider…

The Motivation Crowding Effect suggests that external intervention via monetary incentives or punishments may undermine, and under different identifiable conditions strengthen, intrinsic motivation. As of today, the theoretical possibility of motivation crowding has been the main subject of discussion among economists. This study demonstrates that the effect is also of empirical…

Many of the most important choices in people's lives have an inter-temporal dimension, i.e., these choices are associated with a flow of benefits or costs that accrue in the future. In addition, such choices are frequently habit- forming. Yet, little is known about habit-forming inter-temporal choice behavior. This paper reports the results of an inter-temporal choice experiment…