The paper develops a simulation method that can be used to develop knowledge inductively and test hypotheses about causal processes in social systems. Combining existing simulation methods in novel ways, it describes in detail the uses and requirements for carrying out history-friendly...

This paper studies the frequency of observing a certain number of firms or employees in a region for a given industry. Various predictions for these frequencies are deduced from theoretical considerations. Then, the empirical distributions of 198 industries in Germany are analysed. It is found...

Evolutionary Economics still lacks a well-developed normative branch, i.e., a concept of socio-economic or cultural ´progress` that allows to derive social welfare judgments on alternative economic processes and states and thereby on (political or legal) institutional design. This paper...

The evolutionary explanation of human dispositions to prosocial behaviour and to moralization of such behaviour undermines the moral realist's belief in objective moral facts that hold independently of people's contingent desires. At the same time, advocacy of preferences for significant...

Evolutionary economics is a paradigm for explaining the transformation of the economy. To achieve its goal, it needs being founded on a proper theory of economic behavior. The paper discusses these foundations. It is argued that the historical malleability of economic behavior is based on the...

This paper is based on the conjecture that institutional details matter and that attempts to estimate the economic effects of federalism by drawing on a simple dummy variable neglect potentially important institutional details. Based on a principal component analysis, seven aspects of both...

We present econometric evidence on the influence of an individual’s sociodemographic characteristics, economic background, and dynamic personal and group interactions on co-operative behaviour in a social dilemma situation. The data are from a framed common-pool resource experiment conducted...

Recent empirical literature has shown that the determination of intergovernmental grants is highly influenced by the political bargaining power of the recipient states. In these models federal politicians are assumed to buy the support of state voters, state politicians and state interest groups...

Mit der rasant fortschreitenden Globalisierung und dem dynamischen Prozess der europä¬ischen Integration sind in den letzten zwei bis drei Jahrzehnten grundlegende traditionelle Denk¬kategorien über den Staat und die von ihm zu betreibende Wirtschaftspolitik systema¬tisch in Frage gestellt...

The fiscal commons problem is one of the most prominent explanations of excessive spending and indebtedness in political economics. The more fragmented a government, the higher its spending, deficits and debt. In this paper we investigate to what extent this problem can be mitigated by different...