We examine empirically whether individuals evaluating used cars efficiently aggregate all relevant information on its constituent characteristics. Based on detailed field data on more than 80,000 used car offers in a large online marketplace, we provide evidence for biased information...

Previous research does not teach us much about the role of music for skill development. Learning a musical instrument during childhood may affect educational opportunities by improving cognitive skills, teaching non-cognitive skills or sending positive signals to school teachers. Our study is...

We investigate how the lending activities of a multinational bank s affiliates located abroad are affected by funding difficulties in view of the financial crisis. For this, we consider transaction-induced changes in long-term lending to the private sector of 40 countries by the affiliates of...

Since the breakdown of the Bretton Woods System diverging current account positions in Europe have prevailed. While the Southern and Western European countries have tended to run current account deficits, the current accounts of the Central and Northern European countries, in particular Germany,...

This paper shows how conflicting normative views of fair contribution rules can be used to design sequential contribution mechanisms to foster human cooperation in heterogeneous populations. Our model predicts that a sequential mechanism which solicits contributions first from wealthy actors...

We consider fundamental questions of arbitrage pricing arising when the uncertainty model incorporates volatility uncertainty. With a standard probabilistic model, essential equivalence between the absence of arbitrage and the existence of an equivalent martingale measure is a folk theorem, see...

We study environmental pollution in an economic geography framework with two cities, where pollution arises from commuting within cities, goods transport between cities, production of manufacturing and agricultural goods, and residential energy use. We find that city size has an ambiguous effect...

We estimate the effect of changes in the body mass index on wages and satisfaction in a panel of German employees. Dynamic models indicate that satisfaction with life in general and with health are responsive to weight changes, but wages and satisfaction with work are not. These results mainly...

This paper deals with fiscal policy over the business cycle when international financial markets are imperfect. I document evidence that government expenditure tends to be more procyclical the higher is the borrowing cost for a sovereign. Decomposing government expenditure components shows that...

Applying the Monti-Klein framework, we examine the optimal financing strategy of a fi rm that requires funding for individual projects at an imperfect credit market. In particular, we study under which circumstances the firm should raise debt for projects separately (decentralized funding) or...