This paper empirically investigates complementarities between different sources of research funding with regard to academic publishing. We find for a sample of UK engineering academics that competitive funding is associated with an increase in ex-post publications but that industry funding...

In a large natural field experiment, we explore the effect of providing donors with the opportunity to choose the target country for their donations. We find that only a small fraction of donors use the option, which might reflect a reluctance to consider tradeoffs when those concern important,...

This paper asks whether the gap in subjective happiness between spouses matters per se, i.e. whether it predicts divorce. We use three panel databases to explore this question. Controlling for the level of life satisfaction of spouses, we find that a higher satisfaction gap, even in the first...

This paper studies the construction of social preferences in the lab. Experimental subjects have the opportunity to donate to a charity and to allocate money in a conventional dictator game. The results show that charitable donations and dictator game allocations are positively correlated. The...

We investigate the dynamic effects of a charitable lottery and an income tax on donations. The analysis is based on a two-round dictator game with the subject's charity of choice as recipient and additional incentives in the first round only. The immediate effect of a charitable lottery leads to...

This paper exploits the introduction of the right of referenda at the local level in the German state of Bavaria in 1995 to study the fiscal effects of direct democracy. In the first part of the paper, we establish the relationship between referenda activity and fiscal performance by using a new...

Using a unique dataset of personal characteristics of national finance ministers in Europe (1980 - 2010), I show that especially a finance minister's experience affects the development of public debt. Both a finance minister's experience gained in office and his political experience have an...

We study the effect of direct democracy on local taxation. Our setting is the German federal state of Bavaria, where in 1995 a state-wide referendum introduced the possibility to initiate direct democratic legislation into the local government code. Relying on a sample of all Bavarian...

Does the information provided by mass media have the power to persistently affect individual beliefs about the drivers of success in life? To answer this question empirically, this contribution exploits a natural experiment on the reception of West German television in the former German...

Recently a wide and empirically-backed consensus has emerged arguing that direct democratic control over government's spending decisions through initiatives and referenda constrains government size. But what happens if budgetary matters are excluded from the voters' right of the initiative? I...