A government wanting to promote an efficient allocation of resources as measured by the total surplus, should strategically delegate to its competition authority a welfare standard with a bias in favour of consumers. A consumer bias means that some welfare increasing mergers will be blocked....

This paper analyzes the interplay between social norms and economic incentives in the context of work decisions in the modern welfare state. We assume that to live off one's own work is a social norm, and that the larger the population fraction adhering to this norm, the more intensely it is...

No abstract.

The classical Roy-model of selection on the labor market is extended in order to analyze intergenerational mobility. This is done by linking ability uncertainty to family background. I derive implications for the allocation of talent and for background dependent earnings patterns within...

Post World War II European welfare states experienced several decades of relatively low unemployment, followed by a plague of persistently high unemployment since the 1980's. We impute the higher unemployment to welfare states' diminished ability to cope with more turbulent economic times, such...

This paper analyzes the interplay between social norms and economic incentives in the context of work decision in the modern welfare state. We assume that to live off one's own work is a social norm, and that the larger the population fraction adhering to this norm, the more intensely it is felt...