Consider a public project which produces a consumption good and which benefits future generations. Let a conventional cost-benefit analysis find that it gives higher benefits than projects it would dis-place in the private sector. Voters may nevertheless oppose the public project: the...

This paper uses fractional integration methods to measure the degree of persistence in historical annual data on the world population over the period 1800-2016. The analysis is carried out for the original series, and also for its log transformation and its growth rate. The results indicate that...

This paper provides estimates of persistence in historical UK data on life expectancy applying fractional integration methods to both an annual series from 1842 to 2019 and a 5-year average from 1543 to 2019. The results indicate that the former exhibits an upward trend and is persistent but...

Do democratically chosen rules lead to more cooperation and, hence, higher efficiency, than imposed rules? To discuss when such a "dividend of democracy" obtains, we review experimental studies in which material incentives remain stacked against cooperation (i.e., free-riding incentives prevail)...

This paper reviews recent research on the aggregation of heterogeneous time preferences. Main results are illustrated in simple Ramsey models with two or three agents who differ in their discount factors. We employ an intertemporal view on these models and argue that preferences of a decision...

The assumption that payoff-relevant information is observable but not verifiable is important for many core results in contract, organizational and institutional economics. However, subgame-perfect implementation (SPI) mechanisms - which are based on off-equilibrium arbitration clauses that...