To enforce regulations, governments often delegate power to public officials. However, officials may have incentives to abuse their discretionary power and engage in bribery or extortion. Efforts to monitor and curb such abuses have inspired interest in using new communication technologies to...

We experimentally study the influence of local information conditions on elite capture and social exclusion in community-based development schemes with heterogeneous groups. Not only information on the distribution of aid resources through community-based schemes, but also information on who...

Legal philosophers like Montesquieu, Hegel and Tocqueville have argued that lay participation in judicial decision-making would have benefits reaching far beyond the realm of the legal system narrowly understood. From an economic point of view, lay participation in judicial decision-making can...

Instruments chosen to pursue climate related targets are not always efficient. In this paper we consider an economy with three climate related targets for its electricity generation: a given share of “green” electricity, a given expansion of “green” electricity, and a given reduction of...

This research estimates the impact of climate on European agriculture using a continental scale Ricardian analysis. Climate, soil, geography and regional socio-economic variables are matched with farm level data from 37,612 farms across Western Europe. We demonstrate that a median quantile...

A cap on greenhouse gas emissions makes total emissions a fixed common-property resource. Population increases under a cap are therefore self-limiting: a population increase raises labor and reduces emissions per unit of labor, which lowers incomes and fertility. Because a marginal birth under a...

That climate policies are costly is evident and therefore often creates major fears. But the alternative (no action) also has a cost. Mitigation costs and damages incurred depend on what the climate policies are; moreover, they are substitutes. This brings climate policies naturally in the realm...

Adaptation to climate change is gaining increasing relevance in the public debate of climate policy. However, detailed and regionalised cost estimates as a basis for cost-benefit-analyses are rare. We compose available cost estimates for adaptation in Europe, and in particular Germany, Finland...

Migration flows are shaped by a complex combination of self-selection and out-selection mechanisms. In this paper, we analyze how existing diasporas (the stock of people born in a country and living in an another one) affect the size and human-capital structure of current migration flows. Our...

Many Internet markets rely on quot;feedback systemsquot;, essentially social networks of reputation, to facilitate trust and trustworthiness in anonymous transactions. Market competition creates incentives that arguably may enhance or curb the effectiveness of these systems. We investigate how...