The structure of a social dilemma lies behind many environmental problems. Mingling temporal aspects of resources with the structure of the social dilemma often leads to wrong conclusions. Therefore, it is worth analytically separating temporal aspects from structural aspects of the dilemma....

This paper provides evidence for the impact of technology, labor supply, monetary policy and aggregate spending shocks on hours worked in the Euro area. The evidence is based on a vector autoregression identi?ed using sign restrictions that are consistent with both sticky price and real business...

We model the decision problems faced by the members of societies whose new members are determined by vote. We adopt a number of simplifying assumptions: the founders and the candidates are fixed; the society operates for a fixed number of periods and holds elections at the beginning of each period;...

In this paper, the expansion of private production erodes the quality of commonly owned goods, thereby forcing individuals to rely increasingly on private goods to satisfy their needs. In the face of this deterioration, households keep their labour supplies and saving rates relatively high in...

A framework is proposed for organizing phenomena related to the (mis)prediction of utility, in particular neglecting adaptation. A categorization is introduced that accounts for asymmetries in misprediction. In decision-making, goods and activities satisfying extrinsic desires are more salient...

Options for reforming unfunded public pension schemes that are now being discussed all share the feature that the burden induced by demographic change would be shifted towards presently living and away from unborn generations. Existing models of the political economy of pension reform can not...

Institutionen werden in diesem Beitrag als Regeln menschlichen Handelns begriffen. Im einzelnen geht es um eine Analyse der in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften angewandten Regeln zur Untersuchung individueller Erwerbsentscheidungen (rational choice Ansatz), um Regeln, die in Form von...

As one possible solution to the well-known financing crisis of unfunded social security systems, an increase in the retirement age is a popular option. To induce workers to retire later, it has been proposed to strengthen the link between retirement age and benefit level. The present paper is...

We examine equilibria in competitive insurance markets when individuals take unobservable labor supply decisions. Precautionary labor motives introduce countervailing incentives in the insurance market, and equilibria with positive profits can occur even in the standard case in which individuals...