Die Zweifel wachsen, ob allein die Höhe und der Verlauf des Bruttoinlandsprodukts ausreichen, den Wohlstand einer Gesellschaft zu messen. Um diese Frage zu diskutieren, hatte der Deutsche Bundestag Anfang 2011 eine Enquete-Kommission eingerichtet, die im Frühjahr 2013 ihren Abschlussbericht...

The motivation crowding effect suggests that an external intervention via monetary incentives or punishments may undermine (and under different indentifiable conditions strengthen) intrinsic motivation. As of today, the theoretical \lang1033 possibility of crowding effects is widely accepted...

A cross-regional econometric analysis suggests that institutional factors in the form of direct democracy (via initiatives and referenda) and of federal structure (local autonomy) systematically and sizeably raise s elf-reported individual well-being. This positive effect can be attributed to...

Tax compliance has been studied in economics by analysing the individual decision of a representative person between paying and evading taxes. A neglected aspect of tax compliance is the interaction of taxpayers and tax authorities. The relationship between the two actors can be understood as an...

Historical events are reflected in asset prices. In this paper, we analyse government bond prices of Germany and Austria traded on the Swiss bourse during WWII. Some war events that are generally considered crucial are clearly reflected in government bond prices. This holds, in particular, for...

Based on survey data for Switzerland, new empirical findings on direct democracy are presented. In the first part, we show that, on average, public employees receive lower financial compensation under more direct democratic institutions. However, top bureaucrats are more constrained in direct de...

This study investigates the determinants of economists’ life satisfaction. The analysis is based on a survey of professional, mostly academic economists from European countries and beyond. We find that certain features of economists’ professional situation influence their well-being....

This paper analysis the global distribution of art collections and collectors' biases with respect to the origin of artworks. Employing a unique dataset we find that the greatest number of private art collections are located in Europe, North America and Asia. There are relatively few collections...