This paper summarizes our recent research on evaluating the distributional consequences of social programs. This research advances the economic policy evaluation literature beyond estimating assorted mean impacts to estimate distributions of outcomes generated by different policies and determine...

The current extensive literature on irreversible investment decisions makes the assumption of constant interest rate. In this paper we study the impact of interest rate and revenue variability on the decision to carry out an irreversible investment project. Given the generality of the considered...

This volume was prepared by Markus Reischmann while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in June 2015 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich in November 2015. It includes five self-contained chapters in the fields of public...

This chapter presents an economic approach to character and personality traits with an application to the study of virtue. Economists interpret psychological traits, including character traits and virtue, as strategies that shape responses to situations (actions) determined by underlying...

This paper examines the economic foundations of three criteria used for evaluating the costs and benefits of social programs. Some criteria do not consider the scale of programs or address the costs associated with programs that expand or contract the total government budget. A recent addition...