Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable allocations that would be unattainable by incentives that appeal solely to self-interest. But experimental and other...

Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable allocations that would be unattainable by incentives that appeal solely to self-interest. But experimental and other...

One lingering puzzle is why voluntary contributions to public goods decline over time in experimental and real-world settings. We show that the decline of cooperation is driven by individual preferences for imperfect conditional cooperation. Many people's desire to contribute less than others,...

This paper extends an economic geography model by tariffs to analyze their impact on welfare and sustainability of agglomerations. Policies with and without cooperation are compared, with the goal of maximizing aggregated welfare in the former and regional welfare in the latter case. The main...

This paper contributes to the literature on foreign aid by exclusively explaining a donor’s motivation for foreign external assistance. The underlying framework focuses on recipients’ needs for foreign aid to address income inequality as and when growth occurs. A tax-subsidy policy is...

This paper examines the problem of optimal tax mix analytically in a two-sector growth model with transitional dynamics. Tax revenue is required to provide a pure public good. The key problems are: over-consumption of leisure under labor income or consumption taxes; and under-investment in human...

Following Chamley, Lucas, Laitner, and Aiyagari, this dissertation continues toexplore the answer for the question of zero capital taxation by discussing how taxeson capital income, labor income, and property affect the economy in the contextof a vintage capital model where the embodied...

Diese Doktorarbeit besteht aus vier eigenständigen Forschungsarbeiten, die in der Zeit von Oktober 2004 bis Oktober 2007 geschrieben wurden, während ich Teilnehmer am "Doctoral Programme in Quantitative Economics and Finance" an der Universität Konstanz war. Meine Forschungsinteressen...

Die vorliegende Dissertation besteht aus fünf unabhängigen Forschungspapieren über optimale Steuer- und Bildungspolitik, welche ich während meines Promotionsstudiums an der Universität Konstanz erstellt habe. Private Versicherungen gegen Einkommensrisiko können aufgrund von moral hazard...