Thomas Friedman's book the world is flat has been a bestseller since it appeared in 2005. The remarkable success of the book reflects to a certain extent the present fears with respect to increasing globalization. Using many examples, Friedman argues that distance (however defined) is no longer...

The external influence of scholarly activity has to date been measured primarily in terms of publications and citations, metrics that also dominate the promotion and grant processes. Yet the array of scholarly activities visible to the outside world are far more extensive and recently developed...

This paper examines whether policymakers, economists at the Israeli Finance Ministry, act in their personal pension decisions in accordance with the rational behaviour assumptions underlying the pension policies they advance. We find that while economists' decisions regarding three other...

In this paper we argue that any meaningful bibliometric evaluation of researchers needs to take into account that research productivity follows distinct life cycles. Using an encompassing data set portraying the research behavior of German academic economists, we first show that research...

This paper incorporates publication uncertainty in a game between researchers and journal editors and examines its effects on quantity and quality of published research. A stylized differential Stackelberg game between journal editors and academic authors is considered, where authors seek to...

The German government provides discretionary investment grants to structurally weak regions to reduce regional disparities. We use a regression discontinuity design that exploits an exogenous discrete jump in the probability of receiving investment grants, to identify the causal effects of the...

This paper merges two branches of the literature. On one hand we study a heterogeneous agents framework to model exchange rates and stock prices. On the other hand we model the relationship between these two series through a DSGE model. Investors choose one of two rules to form their...

We develop a model of vertical innovation in which firms incur a market entry cost and choose a unique level of quality. Once established, firms compete for market shares, selling to consumers with heterogeneous tastes for quality. The equilibrium of the pricing game exists and is unique within...