Concern about potential free riding in the provision of public goods has a long history. More recently, experimental economists have turned their attention to the conditions under which free riding would be expected to occur. A model of free riding is provided here which demonstrates that...

Experimental and behavioral economics are well established branches in the economic science. This essay presents and discusses some results and behavioral regularities from these fields which are of potential importance for public policy. After a brief introduction of what experimental and...

Gift exchange experiments have demonstrated that norms can affect labor market outcomes and provided an explanation for involuntary unemployment. However, conflicting results from laboratory and field experiments have questioned the relevance of gift exchange and helped spark an ongoing debate...

We review methodological questions relevant for the design of information provision experiments. We first provide a literature review of major areas in which information provision experiments are applied. We then outline key measurement challenges and design recommendations that may be of help...

This paper presents an oTree addon that allows to include face-to-face communication in the form of a video chat in online group experiments. Group decisions, as opposed to individual decision-making, have recently gained considerable attention. The open-source addon is easy to use, exhibits a...

Credit booms have globally fuelled hikes in stock, raw material and real estate markets which have culminated in the recent US subprime market crisis. We explain the global asset market booms since the mid 1980s based on the overinvestment theories of Hayek, Wicksell and Schumpeter. We argue...

The business cycles theories of Wicksell (1898), Schumpeter (1912), Mises (1912), Hayek (1929, 1935) and Minsky (1986, 1992) explain business cycles by distorted prices on capital markets, buoyant credit expansion and overinvestment. The exuberance during the boom endogenously causes the...

Argentina has been characterised for a long time by inflation, recession, poverty and failed reforms. We analyse the reforms of Javier Milei with the help of the Austrian School of Economics, German ordoliberalism and the theory of financial repression. It is shown that Milei's reforms have...

We introduce the word illustration task (WIT), a novel experimental task to quantify performance in an idea generation context. Between treatments, we vary whether or not piece-rate (PR) incentives are implemented and the degree to which these incentives are aligned with the desirable outcome....

Governments often choose deficit financing over budget cuts or tax increases to fund public goods, driven by the political unpopularity of the latter options. This study investigates the potential trade-off between maintaining prudent public finances and securing voter support by analyzing the...