A fully unbundled, regulated network firm of unknown efficiency level can undertake unobservable effort to increase the likelihood of low downstream prices, e.g., by facilitating downstream competition. To incentivize such effort, the regulator can use an incentive scheme paying transfers to the...

The modern state has monopolized the legitimate use of force. This concept is twofold. First, the state is empowered with enforcement rights; second, the rights of the individuals are (partly) restricted. In a simple model of property rights with appropriation and defense activity, we show that...

Disclosure of information triggers immediate price movements, but it mitigates price movements at a later date, when the information would otherwise have become public. Consequently, disclosure shifts risk from later cohorts of investors to earlier cohorts. Hence, disclosure policy can be...

Der Homo Oeconomicus ist in Verruf geraten. Es gibt viele Stimmen in der öffentlichen Diskussion, die der ökonomischen Wissenschaft vorwerfen, angesichts der weltwirtschaftlichen Krise versagt zu haben. Und dieses Versagen wird darauf zurückgeführt, dass die ökonomische Wissenschaft mit...

By using general information structures and precision criteria based on the dispersion of conditional expectations, we study how oligopolists' information acquisition decisions may change the effects of information sharing on the consumer surplus. Sharing information about individual cost...

There is currently much hope about environmental innovation and green technologies, notably as a response to the threat of climate change. This paper offers a critical perspective on the role of technological innovation to solving environmental problems, based on considering empirical economic...

An evolutionary perspective on economic behavior has to account for the influences that the human genetic endowment has on the choices the agents make. Likely to have been fixed in times of fierce selection pressure, this endowment is presumably adapted to the living conditions of early humans....