We examine how basic research should be financed. While basic research is a public good benefiting innovating entrepreneurs it also affects the entire economy: occupational choices of potential entrepreneurs, wages of workers, dividends to shareholders, and aggregate output. We show that the...

We examine lobby influence on policy outcomes in a legislative vote-buying model with two competing lobbyists and endogenous policy proposals. We compare two polar cases: (1) the committee or (2) the lobbyist seeking policy change writes the bill. Surprisingly we find that if the salience of the...

Welfare aspects of longevity increases are often discussed neglecting the complex relationship between longevity and economic growth, which is the focal point of another literature. Combining both perspectives, we develop an endogenous growth OLG-framework to investigate how longevity affects...

We examine the incentives to self-select into politics. To this end, we set up a two-stage political competition model and test its key mechanisms in the lab. At the entry stage, potential candidates compete in a contest to become their party’s nominee. At the election stage, the nominated...

We analyze the allocation of talent across teams in large matching markets with competition for rank. We show that under general conditions globalization in the form of a convex transformation of payoffs promotes the concentration of talent, i.e. it makes positive assortative matching more...

Even though most countries have agreed to a harmonization of intellectual property rights by signing the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), there is still much dispute about the optimal level of protection of intellectual property rights in the world....

We examine debt-sensitive majority rules. According to such a rule, the higher a planned public debt, the higher the necessary parliamentary majority to approve it. In a two-period model, we compare debt-sensitive majority rules with the simple majority rule when individuals differ regarding...

We suggest a development-compatible refunding system designed to mitigate climate change. Industrial countries pay an initial fee into a global fund. Each country chooses its national carbon tax. Part of the global fund is refunded to developing and industrial countries, in proportion to the...

To examine the impact of globalization on managerial compensation, we consider a matching model where firms compete both in the product market and in the managerial market. We show that globalization, that is, the simultaneous integration of product markets and managerial pools, leads to an...

We integrate banks and the coexistence of bank and bond financing into an otherwise standard New Keynesian Framework with capital, and derive the microfounded, bank-augmented IS and Phillips Curves for the corresponding two-sector economy. We study the interplay of monetary and macroprudential...