A decade ago, the German Advisory Council to the Federal Government on Global Environmental Change (Wissenschaftlichen Beirats der Bundesregierung für Globale Umweltveränderungen - WBGU) published its main report. This attempt to take stock in 2011 made an impact and provided orientation on...

Vor einem Jahrzehnt wurde das Hauptgutachten des Wissenschaftlichen Beirats der Bundesregierung für Globale Umweltveränderungen (WBGU) veröffentlicht. Dieser Versuch einer Bestandsaufnahme im Jahre 2011 hat national und international Impulse gesetzt und Orientierung gegeben. Der WBGU ging...

Choice behavior is rational if it is based on the maximization of some context-independent preference relation. This study re-examines the questions of implementation theory in a setting where players’ choice behavior need not be rational and coalition formation must be taken into account. Our...

We reexamine the claim that the effect of income on subjective well-being suffers from a systematic downward bias if one ignores that higher income is typically associated with more work effort. We analyze this claim using German panel data, controlling for individual unobserved heterogeneity,...

A common assumption in the optimal taxation literature is that the social planner maximizes a welfarist social welfare function with weights decreasing with income. However, high transfer withdrawal rates in many countries imply very low weights for the working poor in practice. We reconcile...

This paper examines the implications of habit formation in private and public consumption for the Pareto-efficient provision of public goods, based on a two-period model with nonlinear taxation. If the public good supply is time-invariant, the presence of habit formation generally alters the...

In many democracies, unemployed and low-income citizens are less willing to vote. Can unconditional cash transfers weaken the link between income and turnout? We study a unique experiment in Finland, which randomly assigned a sizable group of unemployed to basic income for two years (2017-19)....

We conduct a large-scale randomized controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of short text messages (SMS) as a tool to mobilize young voters, and thus, ameliorate the stubborn gap in political participation between younger and older citizens. We find that receiving an SMS reminder before...

Is there a way of matching donations that avoids crowding out? And, more generally, what is the best way to utilize a bigger lead gift for raising smaller contribu-tions in a fundraising campaign? To answer these questions, we present a novel matching method, some simple theoretical...

We present evidence from a natural field experiment and structural model designed to shed light on the efficacy of alternative fundraising schemes. In conjunction with the Bavarian State Opera, we mailed 25,000 opera attendees a letter describing a charitable fundraising project organized by the...