This paper develops a simple model that analyses the relationship between a country's oil endowment and the duration of its autocratic leader. The dictator uses the rents from oil extraction for both personal gain and to pay-off potential opposition and chooses an optimal level of oil...

We use a limited information environment to mimic the state of confusion in an experimental, repeated public goods game. The results show that reinforcement learning leads to dynamics similar to those observed in standard public goods games. However, closer inspection shows that individual decay...

This paper examines the impact of floods on firms' capital accumulation, employment growth and productivity by using a difference-in-difference approach and considering firms' asset structure. We find evidence that companies in flooding regions show higher growth of total assets and employment...

This paper discusses the impact of foreign aid on the recipient country's preparedness against natural disasters. The theoretical model shows that foreign aid can have two opposing effects on a country's level of mitigating activities. In order to test the theoretical propositions we analyse the...

After the flooding in 2002 European governments provided billions of Euros of financial assistance to their citizens. Although there is no doubt that solidarity and some sort of assistance is reasonable, the question arises why these damages were not sufficiently insured. One explanation why...

Due to the public good character of protective measures against natural disasters events, their allocation is very often in the realm of bureaucratic and expert agencies. Based on the economic theory of bureaucracy the behavior of a bureau providing the good protection against natural hazards is...

The paper compares the policy choices regarding risk-transfer against low-probability-high-loss events between elected and appointed public officials. Empirical evidence using data on U.S. municipality-level shows that appointed city managers are more likely to adopt federal risk-transfer...

Within the last decades an increasing number of people practice risky sports in their leisure time. Although there exists a vast number of economic literature on risk-taking behavior, an estimation of the individual willingness to pay (WTP) for the option to exercise risk-taking is missing....

An analysis of the effects of natural hazards on society does not solely depend on a region's topographic or climatic exposure to natural processes, but the region's institutional resilience to natural processes that ultimately determines whether natural processes result in a natural hazard or...

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the role of intergovernmental relations on a country's effort to enforce the objectives of an international environmental agreement on an open access resource. Intergovernmental interaction allows signatory countries to observe compliance behavior of...