Who is most likely to change their risk preferences over the lifecourse? Using German nationally representative survey data and methods to separate age from cohort effects, we estimate the lifecycle patterns in the socioeconomic gradient of self-reported risk preferences. Tolerance to risk drops...

In many economic applications involving comparisons of multivariate distributions, supermodularity of an objective function is a natural property for capturing a preference for greater interdependence. One multivariate distribution dominates another according to the `supermodular stochastic...

Is an assumption of bounded rationality needed to explain Social Security and other mandatory pension plans? In this contribution we argue that when rational agents hold inconsistent expectations such programs may be justified. Two of the features that distinguish Social Security and many other...

Is an assumption of bounded rationality needed to explain Social Security and other mandatory pension plans? In this contribution we argue that when rational agents hold inconsistent expectations such programs may be justified. Two of the features that distinguish Social Security and many other...

The paper reexamines the welfare economics of intergenerational risk. Risk and its resolution over time are modeled as a decision tree: in each period, the consumption of the current one-period living generation is to be traded-off against uncertain benefits of future generations; as time...

We examine how different welfarist frameworks evaluate the social value of mortality riskreduction. These frameworks include classical, distributively unweighted cost-benefit analysis—i.e., the “value per statistical life” (VSL) approach—and three benchmark social welfare functions...

This paper studies to what extent immigrants have less access to main- stream credit than their native counterparts. For this purpose I use a large, unique data set with a panel of Swedish pawnshop customers. The data al- low me to investigate to what extent pawnshop customers actively apply for...

The focus of this study is on black markets which provide an important segment of the parallel economy. These markets operate in disequilibrium,search and information costs become very important.Trafficking in drugs taken as case, to explore both theoretically and empirically. The problem,...

The paper provides the axiomatic characterization of a new relative deprivation index. The concept of relative deprivation is here extended towards the inter-temporal framework. In fact, if we agree that deprivation is a relative concept, we should also believe that individuals not only take...

In a laboratory-controlled environment characterized by uncertainty and incomplete information we provide experimental evidence on the effects of transparency and empowerment on trust (investment by a principal) and trustworthiness (reciprocal behavior of an agent) in a simple two-person...