Progress in closing differences in many objective outcomes for blacks relative to whites has slowed, and even worsened, over the past three decades. However, over this period the racial gap in well-being has shrunk. In the early 1970s data revealed much lower levels of subjective well-being...

In various European legal acts the Council has delegated power to the Commission to set common policy, conditional on specific procedural requirements, which are commonly known as "comitology". In this paper we analyse whether and how far these implementation procedures help to overcome a...

We discuss a principal-agent model in which the principal has the opportunity to include a non-compete agreement in the employment contract. We show that not imposing such an agreement can be beneficial for the principal as the possibility to leave the firm generates implicit incentives for the...

The paper investigates the optimal scope of trade secrets law. In the model, one innovative firm invests resources first to produce knowledge, and then to protect it from unwanted disclosure. A rival firm invests to ferret out this knowledge. Trade secrets law affects this "secrecy contest" by...

The German federal government presented a legislative proposal on tax- and especially VAT law with the focus to combat VAT fraud in (international) ecommerce on July 31st 2018. This draft legislation is explained and discussed.

We discuss a principal-agent model in which the principal has the opportunity to include a non-compete agreement in the employment contract. We show that if the agent faces limited liability and there is an incentive problem the principal prefers not to impose such a clause if and only if the...

We discuss a principal-agent model in which the principal has the opportunity to include a non-compete agreement in the employment contract. We show that not imposing such an agreement can be beneficial for the principal as the possibility to leave the firm generates implicit incentives for the...

By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women's happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women's declining relative well-being is...

Six main characteristics of an economic order are discussed and empirically evaluated for the case of Slovenia. All of them pertain to the institutional setting ab urbe condita; they comprise the legal and jurisdictional situation, the role of private property, the institutionalised strive at...