In this paper we organize the literature on the economics of terrorism around seven different topics, offering a comprehensive view of the literature with a view to identifying questions that remain unanswered. The chosen topic areas are: The Measurement of Terrorist Activity, The Nature of...

This paper analyzes the early research performance of PhD graduates in labor economics, addressing the following questions: Are there major productivity differences between graduates from American and European institutions? If so, how relevant is the quality of the training received (i.e....

What explains the range of situations in which individuals cooperate? This paper studies a theoretical model where individuals respond to incentives but are also influenced by norms of good conduct inherited from earlier generations. Parents rationally choose what values to transmit to their...

Using data from the European Social Survey on most European countries, we look at the relationship between ethnic identity and employment prospects for immigrants from non-European countries. We find that a strong attachment to religion is associated with a lower probability of being employed....

Implementing incentive systems can sometimes backfire in practice: experimental evidence and folklore both suggest that offers of explicit rewards can expose surprising discontinuities in behaviour. This Paper models two such discontinuities that have been claimed by psychologists and...

This paper inserts Veblen’s (1898) concepts of conspicuous leisure and conspicuous consumption into a very simple model. Individuals have the choice to either invest their time into working, leading to easily observable levels of consumption, or into conspicuous leisure, whose effect on...

This paper studies the interactions between an individual's self-esteem and his social environment - in the workplace, at school, and in personal relationships. Because a person generally has only imperfect knowledge of his own abilities, people who derive benefits from his performance (parent,...

The existing literature suggests that when the saving decision of two-earner households under risk is analysed, standard results on the existence of precautionary saving no longer apply: precautionary saving is obtained if and only if very stringent conditions hold. This paper shows that when...

Private pension provision faces the challenging task of providing stable income streams during retirement. The challenge has increased markedly in the last decades due to volatile financial markets, falling interest rates and the withdrawal of employers and external insurers as risk bearers of...

Drawing on and extending the theory of human capital, a comprehensive life-cycle model of individual earnings is designed. The approach taken permits an isolated analysis of three interconnected levels of aggregation (intra-cohort distribution, overall distribution, and lifetime distribution)...