How do improvements in information impact market performance? This dissertation examines the effect of an innovative initiative launched by a private company in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Beginning in October 2000, it set up 1700 internet kiosks and 45 warehouses that provide...

In the debate on the economic effects of labor market regulation much work has focused on minimum wages. A legal minimum wage remains one of the most controversial policy issues. The controversy arises for two main reasons: first, there is no consensus over the economic impacts of the minimum...

The purpose of this thesis is twofold: First, it aims at detecting empirical regularities of the business cycle in Denmark, Germany and the U.S. Second, it tries to give a theoretical explanation for these stylized facts. The thesis is fully in line with the modern analysis of business cycles in...

"The common-property literature has often focused on the question of efficiency. Here we consider distributional issues instead. How should the benefits of the commons (say, a fishery) be distributed? We approach the question from the viewpoint of ownership rather than income redistribution. "A...

"Institutional approaches to social dilemmas have so far focused on how to create incentive structures that channel individuals' behavior into socially desirable outcomes assuming that everyone is selfish. However, the presumption of universal selfishness is not only empirically invalid but may...