We find a U-shaped relation between happiness and religiosity in cross-country panel dataafter controlling for income levels. At a given level of income, the same level of happinesscan be reached with high and low levels of religiosity, but not with intermediate levels. A risein income causes an...

The output multiplier turns negative before a deficit spending program expires.We show the generality of this unpleasant finding for the standard real business cyclemodel. We then calibrate an extended model for the US and demonstrate how fiscalstimulus slows down economic recovery from...

We present a stochastic version of the single-level, multi-product dynamic lotsizingproblem subject to a capacity constraint. A production schedule has tobe determined for random demand so that expected costs are minimized and aconstraint based on a new backlog-oriented Sigma-service-level...

This study validates a survey-based measure of general risk attitude by an incentivecompatible experiment among more than 900 participants in rural Thailand. The surveymeasure of self-assessed risk attitude provides a useful approximation of the experimentallyderived risk attitude. This holds...

While it is widely agreed that Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) holds as a long-runconcept the specific dynamic driving the process is largely build upon a priori economicbelief rather than a thorough statistical modeling procedure. The two prevailing timeseries models, i.e. the exponential smooth...

Ökonomische Experimente sind eine bislang selten verwendete Forschungsmethodeim Bereich der agrarpolitischen Analyse. Dieser Beitrag erörtert die Grundlagenvon Experimenten, vergleicht sie mit anderen Forschungsmethoden und zeigt ein möglichesAnwendungsgebiet für die Agrarpolitikanalyse auf...

We investigate to what extent convergence in production levels per worker has beenachieved in Germany since unification. To this end, we model the distributionof GDP per employee across German districts using two-component normal mixtures.While in the first year after unification, the two...

Unied growth theory predicts that the timing of the fertility transitionis a key determinant of contemporary comparative development, as itmarks the onset of the take-o to sustained growth. Neoclassical growth theorypresupposes a take-o, and explains comparative development by variationsin...

This paper proposes a theory for the gradual evolution of knowl-edge diffusion and growth over the very long run. A feedback mechanismbetween capital accumulation and the ease of knowledge diffusion explains along epoch of (quasi-) stasis and an epoch of high growth linked by a grad-ual economic...

We present a detailed analysis of the patient and resource scheduling problemin rehabilitation hospitals. In practice, the predominantly therapeutical treatmentsand activities which are prescribed for the patients are typically scheduled manually.This leads to rigid and inefficient schedules...