We develop a general framework to study contests, containing the well-known models of Tullock (1980) and Lazear & Rosen (1981) as special cases. The contest outcome depends on players' effort and skill, the latter being subject to symmetric uncertainty. The model is tractable, because a...

There are interesting differences in self-employment rates among countries and also among regions within the same country. There is a multiplicity of reasons to explain the evolution of self-employment and the differences among countries and/or regions. However, unemployment and the distribution...

There is an extensive literature examining the determinants of self-employment. These studies have mainly failed to account for the differences in entrepreneurial spirit across countries. This paper explores the role of culture in self-employment by exploiting variation in historical...

I revisit the question of which motive underlies insurance demand. I draw on the literature of state-dependent utility and on the literature of imperfectly divisible consumption to argue that the general purpose of insurance is not a risk transfer, but meeting a conditional need. In this way,...

Some consumption opportunities, e.g. medical treatments, are both indivisible and only valuable in particular states of nature. The existence of such state-dependent indivisible consumption opportunities influences a person's risk attitudes. In general, people are not risk averse anymore even if...

The main aim of this paper is to enhance our knowledge of the role of regional entrepreneurial culture that is important to foster economic growth. The paper sheds light on regional differences of self-employment and start-up activities in a socialist and post-socialist economy, which is to the...

Despite the growing number of education programs and training seminars that aim at forging entrepreneurial skills, the question whether entrepreneurship is an innate talent or a skill that can be learned has persisted for years and still shapes debates among educators, students and practitioners...

Income taxation may affect the regional allocation of population when prices vary over space. Our contribution is to compare different income tax systems in a migration equilibrium model for Norway using improved measure of regional wage differences. We apply register data of individual wages...

The traditional concept of a strict minimum of nontaxable income equal for all taxpayers embedded in most current income-tax systems is the result of a paradox of fiscal egalitarianism. The paper shows that substituting the traditional notion of a strict minimum of nontaxable income for a scheme...