'public finance', 'political economy', 'growth theory', 'human capital theory', and 'innovation-driven growth theory …'.The first project reveals that the prevailing notion of education externalities is misleading and therefore empirical … externalities of education according to Lucas (1988) are likely to be internalized on the labor market. Education is recognized as a …

of the commons.' This dissertation combines the tools of game theory and experimental methods to gain a broader … conducted. A distinction is made between two types of appropriation externalities: those that are restricted to a single period …

externalities, however, efficiency may no longer be guaranteed.This dissertation shows that a modification of Ausubel & Milgrom … presence of externalities, the resulting auction possessesan efficient Nash equilibrium in pure strategies leading to a core … strategy. The auction is augmented to includeexplicitly the auctioneer's preferences over final outcomes. Externalities …

consumes over time. Addiction, however, is documentedas one of numerous anomalies that the standard theory fails to explain … the gateway effect of addiction development.Chapter 2: I consider a seemingly simple extension of the theory of rational …Chapter 1: The standard theory of intertemporal choice provides a simple but elegantway to analyze how an individual …