Many individuals have empathetic feelings towards animals but frequently consume meat. We investigate this "meat paradox" using insights from the literature on motivated reasoning in moral dilemmata. We develop a model where individuals form self-serving beliefs about the suffering of animals...

This paper investigates the consequences of population aging and of changes in the education composition of the population for macroeconomic performance. Estimation results from a theoretically founded empirical framework show that aging as well as the education composition of the population...

The German population is aging. Since fewer children are born and simultaneously life expectancy rises, demographic changes will lead to a double aging process. The paper analyzes the effects of demographic changes on the public budget by applying a cointegration analysis to global budget...

This paper presents new evidence on how demography affects democratic attitudes in Western democracies. Using individual survey responses, the empirical analysis disentangles age from cohort patterns and other contemporaneous economic and political influences that shape democratic attitudes. The...