Academic economists today are caught in a "Publication Impossibility Theorem System" or PITS. In order to further their careers, they are required to publish in A-journals, but for the vast majority this is impossible because there are few slots open for them in such journals. Such academic...

Famous cultural monuments are often regarded as unique icons, making them an attractive target for terrorists. Despite huge military and police outlays, terrorist attacks on important monuments can hardly be avoided. We argue that an effective strategy for discouraging terrorist attacks on...

People not only care about outcomes, they also value the procedures which lead to the outcomes. Procedural utility is a potentially important source of human well-being. This paper aims at introducing the concept of procedural utility into economics, and argues that it should be incorporated...

Trends in arts and culture tend to be longer-lasting and less fragile than in other fields such as clothing design. Most herding models are not able to explain such stability, instead predicting informational cascades to be fragile and fads to be frequent. The present contribution is able to...

Research evaluation is praised as the symbol of modern quality management. We claim firstly, performance evaluations in research have higher costs than normally assumed, because the evaluated persons and institutions systematically change their behavior and develop counter strategies. Moreover,...

Awards play a large role in the economics profession, which is documented by the large variety and number of awards. However, little scientific attention has been devoted to them. This paper documents the prevalence of awards in the economics profession and analyzes the number and type of awards...

The trends and consequences of terrorist activities are often captured by counting the number of incidents and casualties. More recently, the effects of terrorist acts on various aspects of the economy have been analyzed. These costs are surveyed and put in perspective. As economic consequences...

To overcome problems produced by globalization, some people see the solution in a World Government while others see it in an autarchic global market without any government intervention. Both solutions are rejected due to their major shortcomings. Two superior solutions are proposed: (1) A net of...

It has often been pointed out in the literature that a symbiotic relationship exists between terrorist groups and the media. As yet, however, no formal model has been built based on this issue and only very little empirical research has been done in this field. The present contribution builds a...

Publication and citation rankings have become major indicators of the scientific worth of universities and countries, and determine to a large extent the career of individual scholars. We argue that such rankings do not effectively measure research quality, which should be the essence of...