Does medical insurance affect health care demand and in the end contribute to improvements in the health status? Evidence for China for the year 2004, by means of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), shows that health insurance does not affect health care demand in a significant manner....

In this paper the relation between religion and income is investigated using a micro-dataset for the Netherlands. Religiosity is measured by religious membership and by participation. Instead of estimating separately a religion and an income equation, joint regression is preferred since this...

See also the article 'Religion and income: heterogeneity between countries' in the <I>Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization</I>, 74, 12-29.<P> This paper tests whether the behaviour of households in different countries is homogeneous with respect to the influence of religion on income. The...</p></i>

This discussion paper led to a publication in <A href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167487010000954">'Journal of Economic Psychology'</A>, 31(6), 1008-20.<P>We analyze individual satisfaction with life as a whole and satisfaction with the personal financial situation for Israeli citizens of Jewish and Arab descent. Our data set is the Israeli Social Survey...</p></a>

We use a classic Merton credit risk framework to argue that Islamic Banking Institutions (IBIs) face less incentive to take on risks than Conventional Banking Institutions (CBI). IBIs have less incentive for risk shifting both in and outside of distress situations. We test and confirm this...

We use a classic Merton credit risk framework to argue that Islamic Banking Institutions (IBIs) face less incentive to take on risks than Conventional Banking Institutions (CBI). IBIs have less incentive for risk shifting both in and outside of distress situations. We test and confirm this...

There is increasing empirical and experimental evidence thatproviding financial incentives to agents to performcertain socially desirable actions may permanently reduce other typesof motivations to undertake these actions.We study the impact of financial incentives on the desire for...

This paper experimentally explores how the enforcement of cooperative behavior in a social dilemma is facilitated through institutional as well as emotional mechanisms. Recent studies emphasize the importance of negatively valued emotions, such as anger, which motivate individuals to punish free...

Transaction costs are a major reason why international trade flows are much smaller than traditional trade theory would suggest. Trust between trading partners lowers transaction costs and may therefore enhance trade. The empirical analysis of this paper shows that more trust leads to more trade...

Cultural diversity is a complex and multi-faceted concept. Commonly used quantitative measures of the spatial distribution of culturally-defined groups 'such as segregation, isolation or concentration indexes' are often only capable of identifying just one aspect of this distribution. The...