We investigate emigrant self-selection according to institutional quality using up to 3,566 observations on bilateral migration flows from 77 countries over the 1990-2000 period. We relate these flows to differences in political and economic institutions. We improve and expand upon previous...

Using household data from Vietnam, we provide evidence on the effects of education on freedom of spouse choice. We use war disruptions and spatial indicators of schooling supply as instruments. The point estimates indicate that a year of additional schooling reduces the probability of an...

Utilitarian foundations for limited government are shaky insofar as they assume rational and consistent individuals. Recently economists' assumption of rational actors has come under sustained attack. Behavioural economics has suggested that people are plagued by irrational biases and...

Available wisdom suggests that a negative relationship prevails between economic freedom and perceived corruption among firms. However, the relationship is far from linear and a number of complex interactions make it fairly nuanced. We show that greater competition may accentuate the problem of...

The literature on happiness shows that there are many factors that influence a person's happiness. Extending previous studies, we investigate the role of the freedom of choice as a key contributing construct in influencing a person's happiness. We define two hypothetical sub-constructs for the...

We study paternalistic preferences in two large-scale experiments with participants from the general population in the United States. Spectators decide whether to intervene to prevent a stakeholder, who is mistaken about the choice set, from making a choice that is not aligned with the...

This paper investigates if there is state dependence in the gender composition of managers in German establishments. We analyze whether the number of hired female managers (respectively the share of females within hired managers) depends on the past hiring decisions of an establishment. Using...

This paper examines the factors determining variations in spatial rates of overeducation. A quantile regression model has been implemented on a sample of region-yearly data drawn from the EU Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and several institutional and macroeconomic features...

Findings of prolonged non-employment spells due to more generous unemployment benefits are commonly seen as an indication of reduced job search effort and moral hazard behavior. However, to date, there is hardly any direct evidence of benefit-induced reductions in search effort. This paper...

The focus of this paper is on the choice of the unemployed between becoming an entrepreneur or not. It contributes to the literature by empirically investigating two hitherto neglected issues: What is the impact of risk aversion and personal contact with a role model in shaping the decision to...