Suppose an agency awards a fixed number of prizes to applicants in different categories such that the applicant-to-winner ratio is constant by category. It is demonstrated in a simple theoretical model that the number of awards in a category will typically be positively related to the degree of...

Replication studies are considered a hallmark of good scientific practice. Yet they are treated among researchers as an ideal to be professed but not practiced. To provide incentives and favorable boundary conditions for replication practice, the main stakeholders need to be aware of what drives...

This paper provides a preliminary assessment of recent reforms of German employment promotion policy. While several recent studies analyze the impact of measures of employment promotion for the case of Germany, no comparable study exists on the aggregate level, thus precluding any assessment of...

Persistently high unemployment, tight government budgets and the growing scepticism regarding the effects of active labour market policies (ALMP) are the basis for a growing interest in evaluating these measures. This paper intends to explain the need for evaluation on the micro- and...

"The goal of scientific work is to understand more and more by less and less. In this effort, theoretical unification plays a large part. There are two main types of theoretical unification -- unification of different theories of the same field of phenomena and unification of theories of...

We investigate how, in temporary economic hardship, agents change their consumption of health services, and how this depends on whether the service is universally free-of-charge visits to GP's or privately co-financed dental care. We find that own expenditures for dental care decrease. The...

We study in an online, real-effort experiment how the bracketing of non-binding goals affects performance in a work-leisure self-control problem. We externally induce the goal bracket - daily goals or a weekly goal - and within that bracket let subjects set goals for how much they want to work...