This paper examines the role of simplified heuristics in the formation of preferences for public goods. Political scientists have suggested that voters use simplified heuristics based on the positions of familiar parties to infer how a proposed policy will affect them and to cast a vote in line...

The basic distinction made in this volume compares “economic value”, expressed in monetary terms, to “cultural value”, reflecting cultural, aesthetic and artistic significance. This paper makes a different distinction which is rarely made explicit but which is of central importance to...

Traditionally, economists make a sharp distinction between stated and revealed preferences, viewing the latter as more fully meeting the assumptions of economic analysis. Here, we consider one form of empirical evidence regarding this belief: the consistency of choices in stated and revealed...

After several decades of academic research on the contingent valuation (CV) method a consistent behavioral explanation of 'hypothetical bias' is still lacking. Based on evidence from economics, economic psychology and the political sciences, I propose an explanation that is based on two simple...

In November 2005, 55.7 percent of 2 million Swiss voters approved a 5-year moratorium (ban) on the commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) plants within Switzerland. The present study examines how individual voting decisions were determined by (i) socioeconomic characteristics, (ii)...

Quality of life factors continue to gain importance in residential location decisions as well as location decisions of firms. One such factor is an attractive local landscape. The aim of this paper is to provide a survey of the empirical literature on the role of landscape amenities in local...

This paper examines the role of other-regarding and time preferences for cooperation in the field. We study the preferences of fishermen whose main, and often only, source of income stems from using a common pool resource (CPR). The exploitation of a CPR involves a negative interpersonal and...

This paper advances two propositions, one concerning content, the other concerning research strategy. (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...

In Part I the author was concerned with modeling the monthly logarithmic CHF/USD exchange rate, ''s''. He rejected a model proposed by B.T. McCallum. Searching for a more appropriate framework a story by P. De Grauwe was introduced, bringing complex cognitive processes and social practices into...

The analysis of monthly exchange rates is carried out using a model of McCallum, which is based on the concept of Rational Expectations. Applying the model to the CHF/USD exchange rate starting a misspecification analysis, the RE component appears to be a weak point of the model. The theory of...