Why are people so often overconfident? We conduct an experiment to test the hypothesis that people become overconfident to more effectively persuade or deceive others. After performing a cognitively challenging task, half of our subjects are informed that they can earn money by convincing others...

During the last years more and more discussions came up about the contribution of technology-oriented and technology-intensive industries for the economic development and employment. This paper examines the foundation dynamic and the regional clustering of various technology-oriented sectors in...

New firm set ups, especially in High Tech industries, can give important impulses for the technological development and the catch up process in the Neuen Bundes1aender. The paper at hand gives an overview about the formation behaviour considering the preconditions of the former German Democratic...

Gegenstand dieses Aufsatzes ist es, Forschungshypothesen zur Firmenselektion und zur industriellen Entwicklung aus der industrieökonomischen Theorie, sowie den theoretischen Ansatz der Organisationsökologie zu testen. Der empirischen Untersuchung liegt eine Stichprobe aus der Gewerbemeldedatei...

We present the first comprehensive evidence on the role of cognitive ability and personality traits in the selection of electoral candidates and election of politicians. Using unique data that combine population registers and election statistics from local government elections in Finland with...

Do agents believe to be agreeing more with others in the long-run? This paper designs an experiment to study how cognitive abilities affect actual and perceived disagreement in a standard sequential belief updating task with public signals. We document a persistent gap in the perception of...