Causal inference in the empirical sciences is based on counterfactuals. This paper presents the counterfactual account of causation in terms of Lewis's possible-world semantics, and reformulates the statistical potential outcome framework and its underlying assumptions using counterfactual...

Research on happiness has produced valuable insights into the sources of subjective well-being. A major finding from this literature is that people exhibit a baseline happiness that shows persistent strength over time, and twin studies have shown that genes play a significant role in explaining...

In recent economic literature, there has been an increasing interest in modelling preferences as endogenous. Some arguments go along the lines that institutions shape preferences. This paper suggests that adopting a more substantive concept of preferences furthers our understanding of how they...

Strong forces lead to a withering of academia as it exists today. The major causal forces are the rankings mania, increased division of labor in research, intense publication pressure, academic fraud, dilution of the concept of 'university' and inadequate organizational forms for modern...

In this paper we investigate how the expulsion of a player influences the outcome of a football match. Common sense implies a negative impact for the affected team. However, an old football myth suggests that such an expulsion might also be beneficial since it increases the team spirit as well...

In this paper we investigate how the expulsion of a player influences the outcome of a football match. Common sense implies a negative impact for the affected team. However, an old football myth suggests that such an expulsion might also be beneficial since it increases the team spirit as well...

The structural stability of different languages subject to the import of external elements is analyzed. We focus on the temporal side of the different processes interacting to produce a change in the structure of the language. That is, the rate of import and dissipation of new elements is seen...

Angesichts der stetigen, überproportionalen Zunahme des Anteils an digitalen Dokumenten im Bibliotheksbestand wird die automatische Indexierung als einzige Möglichkeit angesehen, die Sacherschließung, die eine zentrale Informationsdienstleistung der Bibliotheken darstellt, auch zukünftig...

The British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) is the first study of its kind to have asked for permission to link to a range of administrative health records. Multivariate analysis is applied to investigate whether there is consent bias. We find that consent on the BHPS is not biased with respect to...

There is a growing literature measuring research excellence in economics. The h-index is noteworthy in combining quantity and research quality in a single measure of researcher excellence, and its ability to be extended to measure the quantity and quality of the researchers in a department. We...