We study the causal relationship between moral values ("ought" statements) and factual beliefs ("is" statements) and show that, contrary to predictions of orthodox Bayesian models, values exert an influence on beliefs. This effect is mediated by prior political leanings and, thus, contributes to...

Advances in online technologies and bandwidth availability have opened new vistas for online distribution of digital goods. But potential benefits for consumers are juxtaposed against challenges for retailers of such goods. Here we investigate one type of digital experience good - music - whose...

The increasing pervasiveness of the internet, broadband connections and the emergence of digital compression technologies have dramatically changed the face of digital music piracy. Digitally compressed music files are essentially a perfect public economic good, and illegal copying of these...

This article contrasts the secular and Catholic literature on consumerism and its implications for liberty. Three specific questions are considered: Is consumerism harmful to liberty? Is it a necessary consequence of a market economy? Who is responsible for consumerism? The article shows that...

Despite being considered by many to be harmful for society, inequality has been rising in the past decades. How people experience the level of inequality may be different from the objective levels of inequality. In this literature review we systematically revisit common elicitation methods of...

Using a framework that distinguishes short-term consumer preferences, individual reflective preferences and political preferences, we discuss from a constitutional economics perspective whether individuals find it in their common constitutional interest to endow representatives and bureaucrats...

Using a framework that distinguishes short-term consumer preferences, individual reflective preferences and political preferences, we discuss from a constitutional economics perspective whether individuals find it in their common constitutional interest to endow representatives and bureaucrats...

In recent years, concerns about misinformation in the media have skyrocketed. President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that various news outlets are disseminating "fake news" for political purposes. But when the information contained in mainstream media news reports provides no clear clues...

We study the effect of noise due to exogenous information distortions in the context of Bayesianpersuasion. In particular, we ask whether more noise (a la Blackwell) is always harmful forthe information designer, i.e., the sender. We show that in general this is not the case. Weprovide a...