Angesichts sich wiederholender Hochwasserereignisse in Deutschland wird immer wieder die Einführung einer Pflichtversicherung gegen Elementarschäden gefordert. Der Beitrag untersucht gängige Argumente für die Einführung einer solchen Versicherung. Im Ergebnis plädieren die Autoren für...

We study the role of status in an experimental Principal-Agent game.Status is awarded to subjects based on either talent or luck. In each randomly matched principal-agent pair, the principal chooses the agent's status-contingent piece rate for a task in which talent matters for performance (an...

The effects of different institutional arrangements for the central bank are examined in the presence of economic shocks and uncertainty about the central banker's and the medianvoter's inflation target. A contract which is based on self-imposed monetary target announcements proves to be...

Eminent domain gives public agencies the right to acquire property from private individuals in exchange for just compensation. Following Kelo vs. New London 2005, the powers of eminent domain were extended, opening the door for potential abuses of power by government officials. In this paper, I...

This paper develops a theory of umbrella branding as a way to link the reputations of otherwise unrelated products. The analysis predicts that umbrella branding can credibly signal positive correlation between the qualities of the included products to consumers, but cannot certify high quality...

Commercial open source software (COSS) products--privately developed software based on publicly available source code--represent a rapidly growing, multibillion-dollar market. A unique aspect of competition in the COSS market is that many open source licenses require firms to make certain...

This series of discussions presents commentaries and a rejoinder on the economic perspectives on branding arising from Moorthy [Moorthy S (2012) Can brand extension signal product quality? <i>Marketing Sci.</i> 31(5):756-770].

We investigate a business-to-business context and ask <i>when</i> and <i>why</i> a firm should announce a "reference program" that commits the firm to facilitating the flow of information about the efficacy of its products from early adopters to potential late adopters. We model a monopolist manufacturer with...