One's position in an alphabetically sorted list may be important in determining access to rationed goods or oversubscribed public services. Motivated by anecdotal evidence, we investigate the importance of the position in the alphabet of the last name initial of Czech students for their...

In this paper we take a "market-based" approach to examine whether increased school expenditures are valued by potential residents and whether the current level of public school provision is inefficient. We do so by employing an instrumental variables strategy to estimate the effect of state...

The past few years have seen a highly charged debate about whether contingent valuation (CV) surveys can provide valid economic measures of people's values for environmental resources. In an effort to appraise the validity of CV measures of economic value, a distinguished panel of social...

This empirical paper investigates the impact of different sources of increasing returns on firm innovative behaviour in two regions of the UK in the period of the 1990s. We pay particular attention to the impact of intermediate markets such as the market for specialised business services as a...

This paper shows that having access to a fast Internet connection is an important determinant of capitalization effects in property markets. We combine microdata on property prices in England between 1995 and 2010 with local availability of Internet broadband connections. Rich variation in...

A new and important concept in global warming economics and policy is the social cost of carbon or SCC. This concept represents the economic cost caused by an additional ton of carbon-dioxide emissions or its equivalent. The present study describes the development of the concept as well as its...

Economic development in Latin America has trailed most other world regions over the past four decades despite its relatively high initial development and school attainment levels. This puzzle can be resolved by considering the actual learning as expressed in tests of cognitive skills, on which...

Economic development in Latin America has trailed most other world regions over the past four decades despite its relatively high initial development and school attainment levels. This puzzle can be resolved by considering the actual learning as expressed in tests of cognitive skills, on which...

This paper is an attempt to provide evidence on two questions: Why do companies sponsor art events, and where exactly does the money go? We analyse data collected on the revenue structure of cultural institutions in Berlin and Hamburg. This data set not only tells us where the money goes, it...