Language is a strong and robust determinant of international trade patterns: Countries sharing a common language trade … that this trade-promoting effect of language is likely to reflect cultural ties, rather than lower costs of communication … or similar institutions. Analyzing unique data for a single-language country, Germany, we find that similarities in the …

45,000 schools. Matching this information to 439 current German regions, we construct a dialect similarity matrix. Using …

Economists usually think that rational voters have little incentives to acquire costly information. We present a … information if media technology is available because then they do not condition their informational decisions on being pivotal …-ride. Further, we show how the quality of information depends on the size of the electorate, the prior knowledge of voters and on …

No voters cast their votes based on perfect information, but better educated and richer voters are on average better … strong correlation between income and political information, Congress representatives vote more conservatively, which is also …

measures of workers’ productivity and trustworthiness and make this information available to potential employers. Our data show …

with various empirical findings, is the assumption that information about output decisions flows more freely within a …

have better information about the state of the world than voters. Three types of institutions are compared: direct …

appropriate information provision enhances efficiency. We discuss extensions of the model and argue that subsidies may be a … property of a signalling equilibrium to overcome credibility problems in information provision. In addition we point out … possible problems with overreaction to public information. Furthermore, we suggest a new focus for development policy. …

-set deviation compared to single-set ones; an interpretation is given in terms of information costs; examples show the relevance of …