We analyse an experimental public goods game in which group members can endogenously determine whether they want to supplement a standard voluntary contribution mechanism with the possibility of rewarding or punishing other group members. We find a large and positive effect of endogenous...

We study a large-scale French reform that provided generous downside insurance for unemployed individuals starting a business. We study whether this reform affects the composition of people who are drawn into entrepreneurship. New firms started in response to the reform are, on average, smaller,...

The compensation of a professor who is awarded an internal Canada Research Chair (CRC) increases by 6.3 percent on average in our sample. This gain is large initially but quickly erodes over CRC tenure. The gain is slightly larger for professors who change university to obtain a CRC Chair....

The paper considers the case for an internationally coordinated further fiscal stimulus during the second half of 2009. Although this makes some of the analysis period-specific, most of the issues and principles considered are timeless. For a fiscal stimulus to be both effective there must be...

Direct democracy with its use of referenda avoids the prototypical principal-agent problems of delegation in indirect democracies, especially since elected representatives are usually not committed by law to keep their promises. Sequential or more complex referenda may, however, result in an...

This paper presents experimental evidence that contributions to a public good can be path-dependent for a limited time span. We study a repeated linear public-good game with punishment opportunities. Our data shows that subjects who had experienced a higher marginal return on public-good...