FamData is a database covering family businesses and non-family businesses across various size classes and branches containing structural and financial information. The ifo Institute assembled a business panel with executives from almost 4,000 companies. In addition to the “hard” business...

We conduct an experiment where subjects read online news articles and are shown ads for brands next to those articles. Using eye-tracking technology, we measure the attention that each individual devotes to each article and ad. Then, respondents choose between cash or vouchers for the brands...

We estimate perceptions about the Fed’s monetary policy rule from panel data on professional forecasts of interest rates and macroeconomic conditions. The perceived dependence of the federal funds rate on economic conditions is time-varying and cyclical: high during tightening episodes but low...

What are the long-term effects of Communism on economically relevant notions such as social trust? To answer this question, we use the reunification of Germany as a natural experiment and study the post-reunification trajectory of convergence with regard to individuals' trust and risk, as well...

In this paper, we revisit the association between happiness and inequality. We argue that the interaction between the perceived and the actual fairness of the income generation process affects this association. Building on a simple model of individual labor-market participation under...

Although measures of sensitivity to inequality are important in judging the welfare effects of health-care programmes, it is far from straightforward how to elicit them and apply them in health-care decision making. This paper provides an overview of the literature on the measurement of...

The study of optimal long-term care (LTC) social insurance is generally carried out under the utilitarian social criterion, which penalizes individuals who have a lower capacity to convert resources into well-being, such as dependent elderly individuals or prematurely dead individuals. This...

Filing income tax returns or insurance claims often requires that individuals comply with complex rules to meet their obligations. We present evidence from a laboratory tax experiment suggesting that the effects of complexity on compliance are intrinsically linked to distributive fairness. We...