Commodities do not only serve the purpose of satisfying direct needs in the production and con-sumption process. Some of them can also be used to display social status and to affect the position of an individual in society. This paper addresses the question under which circum-stances...

Im Jahr 1930 veröffentlichte Keynes einen Aufsatz über die Zukunft der Enkel, in dem er die Lösung des ökonomischen Problems und mithin das Ende der bisherigen Menschheitsgeschichte prognostizierte. Diese Prognose und die zahlreichen Implikationen, die Keynes aus ihr herleitete, werden hier...

Unlike physical capital, human capital has both embodied and disembodied dimensions. It can be perceived of as skill and acquired knowledge, but also as knowledge spillover effects between overlapping generations and across different skill groups within and across countries. We illustrate the...

Societies in Western civilisation enforce their rules through formal institutions such as secularism (SES), whereas in less developed civilisations often rely on informal institutions such as religion (RES). The present paper attempts to explain the determinants of societies’ choice between...