A number of competing social preference models have been developed inspired by the evidence from economic experiments. We test the relative performance of some of these models using an experimental design that is aimed at capturing pure distributional concerns in a multi-person setting. We find...

We examine a central result in corporate finance – the Modigliani-Miller capital structure irrelevance proposition – from a Coasian property rights perspective. Building upon the work of Coase, Demsetz and Cheung, we develop an enabling methodology to study the impact of positive Coasian...

Risk matters when corporate debt has a positive probability of default. Lenders have traditionally used covenants to protect their property rights because the financing and operating decisions of firms can reduce the value of the firm’s outstanding debt. We examine the use of captive finance...

Abstract: Studies of political favouritism in Africa often treat ethnic and regional favouritism as interchangeable concepts. The present paper distinguishes between the two and investigates their relative influence in Sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on whether individuals perceive their ethnic...

This essay offers an overview and discussion about the conditions for Swedish workers to obtain lifelong learning. It studies how the Swedish schooling system and the institutions for adult training have influenced workers’ abilities to upgrade their skills. A general conclusion is that a...

This paper analyses the effect of trade unions on earnings in Kenyan manufacturing using a switching regression model, which takes into account endogeneity of union status of workers. In contrast to earlier studies of the Kenyan labour market, which indicate that the union effect on wages is...

This paper contributes to the recent literature exploring the determinants of individual environmental behaviors. Contrary to many previous studies, which consider single items as proxies of individuals' overall environmental responsibility, we adopt a multidimensional perspective and derive...

This paper discusses how a benevolent policy maker should act based on some, possibly non-welfaristic,ethical principle in cases where people's preferences are not perfectly informed,consistent and fully developed with regard to all goods, including all kinds of environmental goods, as is...

This paper proposes that people derive utility not only from goods or their attributes as in standard models, but also from their self-image as influenced by their own perception of their preferences. In a representative survey, most respondents considered their own concern for status when...

This paper revisits old questions of the proper subject and bounds of economics: Does economics study “provisioning”? or markets? or a method of reasoning, self-interested rational optimization? A variety of scholars and others in many fields make use of a taxonomy of society consisting of...