Mechanisms where sellers set the price and are charged a linear commission fee are widely used by real world intermediaries, e.g. by real estate brokers. Empirically these commission fees exhibit very little variance, both across heterogeneous regional markets and over time. So far, there is no...

We empirically analyze the formation of international environmental agreements within a political economy framework. We develop a theoretical model of state dependent net benefits of ratification predicting (i) strategic behavior with respect to the timing of ratification and (ii) that...

This article examines the impact of customer reward programs on the competitive outcome in duopolistic markets. We argue that loyalty discounts for repeat customers constitute a commitment device beneficial to suppliers rather than customers. Analyzing a two-period Bertrand model we show that...

We develop a perpetual youth model to investigate how longevity affects economic growth and welfare. Life expectancy is determined by individuals' investments in healthcare. We find that improvements in the healthcare technology always increase the steady state growth rate. Although the effect...

Within the context of the neoclassical growth model I investigate the implications of (initial) endowment inequality when the rich have a higher marginal savings rate than the poor. More unequal societies grow faster in the transition process, and therefore exhibit a higher speed of convergence....

External price benchmarking imposes a price cap for pharmaceuticals based on prices of identical products in other countries. Suppose that a regulatory agency can either directly negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical manufacturers or implement a benchmarking regime based on foreign prices....

A collective decision problem is described by a set of agents, a profile of single-peaked preferences over the real line and a number k of public facilities to be located. We consider public facilities that do not suffer from congestion and are non-excludable. We provide a characterization of...

Globalization increasingly involves less-developed countries (LDCs), i.e., economies which usually suffer from severe imperfections in their financial systems. Taking these imperfections seriously, we analyze how credit frictions affect the distributive impact of trade liberalizations. We find...

Two firms produce a product with a horizontal and a vertical characteristic. We call the vertical characteristic quality. The difference in the quality levels determines how the firms share the market. Firms know the quality levels, consumers do not. Under non-comparative advertising a firm may...

This paper discusses the interplay between the choice of the discount rate, greenhouse gas mitigation and endogenous technological change. Neglecting the issue of uncertainty it is shown that the green golden rule stock of atmospheric carbon is uniquely determined, but is not affected by...