This paper shows that courts are not only a crucial part of the rule of law in the conventional sense but that they can also serve an important function in revealing information regarding the performance of lower level governments to the central government, and thereby improve their performance....

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only caused thousands to die and millions to lose their jobs, it has also prompted more governments to simultaneously to declare a state of emergency than ever before. States of emergency usually imply the extension of executive powers that diminishes the powers of...

In der Öffentlichkeit besteht Konsens darüber, dass das deutsche Rentensystem dringend reformiert werden muss, da das Verhaltnis von Beitragszahlern zu Rentnern immer ungünstiger werden wird. Die Regierungskommission "Verlasslicher Generationenvertrag" hat Ende Marz 2020 in ihrem...

The civil war in Syria has been raging since 2011. We ask whether civil war experience affects voluntary cooperation and its coordination by means of peer punishment. To answer that question, we ran experiments with Syrians and Jordanians, and use a victimization index to measure the individual...

An unprecedented number of refugees from Syria has sought refuge in both the Middle East and Europe since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011. We analyze the level of altruism and risk-seeking among Syrian civil war victims in Jordan. We find systematic variations in their revealed...

We report the results of an experiment on norm violation, specifically lying, in a repeatedly played mind game with Syrian refugees in Jordan and in Germany. We compare their behavior with Jordanians, Germans, and Syrians who still live in Syria. The average number of lies is amazingly similar -...

We analyze possible links between both trust and trustworthiness among Syrian refugees in Germany in relation to the refugees' involvement in two different forms of social networking (forming bonding ties with other refugees vs. forming bridging ties between refugees and Germans). We implement...

It is now abundantly clear that social norms channel behavior and impact economic development. This insight leads to the question: How do social norms evolve? This survey examines research that relies on geography to explain the development of social norms, and suggests that religion and family...

Nine out of ten modern constitutions contain explicit emergency provisions, describing who can call a state of emergency (and under which conditions) and the additional powers government enjoys under a state of emergency. As states of emergency typically allocate additional powers to the...