The modern state has monopolized the legitimate use of force. This concept is twofold. First, the state is empowered with enforcement rights; second, the rights of the individuals are (partly) restricted. In a simple model of property rights with appropriation and defense activity, we show that...

Der Homo Oeconomicus ist in Verruf geraten. Es gibt viele Stimmen in der öffentlichen Diskussion, die der ökonomischen Wissenschaft vorwerfen, angesichts der weltwirtschaftlichen Krise versagt zu haben. Und dieses Versagen wird darauf zurückgeführt, dass die ökonomische Wissenschaft mit...

Rodrigues-Neto (2009) has shown that a given specification of posteriors of different players in an incomplete-information setting is compatible with a common prior if and only if the posteriors satisfy the so-called cycle equations. This note shows that, if, for any player, any element of the...

By using general information structures and precision criteria based on the dispersion of conditional expectations, we study how oligopolists' information acquisition decisions may change the effects of information sharing on the consumer surplus. Sharing information about individual cost...

There is currently much hope about environmental innovation and green technologies, notably as a response to the threat of climate change. This paper offers a critical perspective on the role of technological innovation to solving environmental problems, based on considering empirical economic...

An evolutionary perspective on economic behavior has to account for the influences that the human genetic endowment has on the choices the agents make. Likely to have been fixed in times of fierce selection pressure, this endowment is presumably adapted to the living conditions of early humans....

The paper discusses recent trends in the sister sciences of evolutionary economics and complexity economics. It suggests that a unifying approach that marries the two strands is needed when reconstructing economics as a science capable of tackling the two key questions of the discipline: complex...

The claim that the Darwinian paradigm of blind-variation-and-selective-retention can be generalized from the biological to the socio-cultural realm has often been questioned because of the critical role played by human purposeful design in the process of cultural evolution. In light of the issue...