Social mobility is a key element of meritocratic societies. We analyze multigenerational social mobility with a hand-collected yearly Swiss dataset from 1550 to 2019. With our surname-based approach, we measure the Swiss society's overall permeability over more than 450 years. Furthermore, we...

Citizens are willing to abandon their short-term financial interest in free-riding considerably, if governments act in their interest, if procedures of the public decisions-making process are felt to be fair and if other fellow-citizens have to contribute also an adequate share to the community....

Social mobility is a key element of meritocratic societies. We analyze multigenerational social mobility with a hand-collected yearly Swiss dataset from 1550 to 2019. With our surname-based approach, we measure the Swiss society's overall permeability over more than 450 years. Furthermore, we...

Citizens are willing to abandon their short-term financial interest in free-riding considerably, if governments act in their interest, if procedures of the public decisions-making process are felt to be fair and if other fellow-citizens have to contribute also an adequate share to the community....

Citizens are willing to abandon their short-term financial interest in free-riding considerably, if governments act in their interest, if procedures of the public decisions-making process are felt to be fair and if other fellow-citizens have to contribute also an adequate share to the community....

The fiscal commons problem is one of the most prominent explanations of excessive spending and indebtedness in political economics. The more fragmented a government, the higher its spending, deficits and debt. In this paper we investigate to what extent this problem can be mitigated by different...