Mutually beneficial agreements might fail if the parties fear contractual opportunism. Litigation is supposed to prevent this, but still leaves room for litigational opportunism: Even knowing that the opponent has fulfilled his obligations, a party might bring suit. We show that with positive...

Even if the expected punishment on tax evasion is negligible, empirical studies show that actual tax evasion is smaller than rational choice models predict. In addition to this, tax payer do not respond on parameter changes as predicted. Some authors tried to explain this puzzle by assuming "tax...

Mutually beneficial agreements might fail if the parties fear contractual opportunism. Litigation is supposed to be a remedy, but gives scope for another kind of opportunistic behavior which we call litigational opportunism: Even knowing that the opponent has fulfilled his obligations, a party...

The aim of this paper is to derive conditions under which either dictatorship or the rule of law are the equilibria of a post-constitutional game. It thus contributes to positive constitutional economics, i.e., the research program that is interested in explaining the emergence of constitutions...

Die empirische Prüfung theoretischer Forschungsergebnisse wirft in der Ökonomie - wie bei jeder Sozialwissenschaft - Probleme auf. Anders als in den Naturwissenschaften können kaum volkswirtschaftliche Labors errichtet werden. Seit einigen Jahren nutzen Ökonomen die Erfahrungen der...

The Basle Accord of 1988 regulates how much equity banks must set aside as a cushion against the default risk. In its 1999 proposal for a new Accord, the Basle Committee seeks to introduce different equity ratios for customers of different risk levels. The proposal strongly favors external...