This paper uses a large cross-country survey of business firms to assess their influence on government policies. It is found that influence is associated with larger, government-owned firms that have a high degree of ownership concentration. In contrast, foreign ownership matters little. It is...

The role of money in producing sustained subjective well-being seems to be seriously compromised by social comparisons and habituation. But does that necessarily mean that we would be better off doing something else instead? This paper suggests that the phenomena of comparison and habituation...

Institutions that potentially have a positive impact on economic performance rarely exist outside of a system of institutions; rather they are embedded in the economic order of a country. It is thus imperative to investigate bundles of performance-enhancing institutions, particularly those...

In diesem Beitrag wird das kontrafaktische Szenario betrachtet, dass die ganze Erde einen globalen Bundesstaat nach dem Vorbild der Bundesrepublik Deutschland bilden würde, in dem das Grundgesetz analog für alle Menschen und Länder Geltung hätte. Grundgesetz und Organisation der...

The role of money in producing sustained subjective well-being seems to be seriously compromised by social comparisons and habituation. But does that necessarily mean that we would be better off doing something else instead? This paper suggests that the phenomena of comparison and habituation...

This paper formulates a general theory of how political unrest influences public policy. Political unrest is motivated by emotions. Individuals engage in protests if they are aggrieved and feel that they have been treated unfairly. This reaction is predictable because individuals have a...

When confronted with market weaknesses and failures determining sustainability problems for environmental common-pool resources, economic analysis has proposed government intervention as the only alternative available. Elinor Ostrom showed that this dichotomy between market and government is not...

We present a novel approach for measuring democracy based on Support Vector Machines, a mathematical algorithm for pattern recognition. The Support Vector Machines Democracy Index (SVMDI) is continuously on the 0-1-interval and enables a very detailed measurement of democracy for 188 countries...