Using declassified Federal Bureau of Narcotics records on 800 US Mafia members active in the 1950s and 1960s, and on their connections within the organized crime network, I estimate network effects on gangsters' economic status. Lacking information on criminal proceeds, I measure economic status...

We study peer effects in crime by analyzing co-offending networks. We first provide a credible estimate of peer effects in these networks equal to 0.17. This estimate implies a social multiplier of 1.2 for those individuals linked to only one co-offender and a social multiplier of 2 for those...

Vor dem Hintergrund der Abwanderung hochqualifizierter Arbeitskräfte aus den GUS-Staaten zeigt die vorliegende Arbeit anhand der Arbeitsweise zweier Schweizer Open- Innovation-Dienstleister, wie Open-Innovation- und Crowdsourcing-Strategien nachhaltige Vorteile aus der exzellenten...

Using detailed data on a cohort of young Americans who were in their late twenties and early thirties in 2008, we investigate the importance of forces different from economic incentives in nest-leaving decisions. We apply recent methods from social network econometrics to identify the importance...

Recent studies in psychology and neuroscience find that fictional works exert strong influence on readers and shape their opinions and worldviews. We study the Potterian economy, which we compare to economic models, to assess how Harry Potter books affect economic literacy. We find that some...

Die "Technikakzeptanz" der Bevölkerung ist seit den 70er Jahren immer wieder Gegenstand von Umfragen. Dabei geht es vor allem um kontrovers diskutierte gesellschaftliche Konsequenzen der Kernenergie, der Informations- und Kommunikationstechniken und der Gentechnik. Heute ist es neben der...

This paper explores the following chain of conjectures: rising use of the internet, the widespread access to global information, and intensified communication between regions and countries brought about, for example, by intensified trade links bring about expansion of people's social space and...

This paper studies the effect of social closure on crime and tax evasion rates using disaggregated data for Italian municipalities. It measures the degree of social openness of a community by the diversity of its surname distribution, which reflects the history of migration and inbreeding. It...

This paper explores the following chain of conjectures: rising use of the internet, the widespread access to global information, and intensified communication between regions and countries brought about, for example, by intensified trade links bring about expansion of people's social space and...

Das Paper gibt einen Überblick über das Leben und die Bedeutung von Walter Lippmann, der in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts einer der bedeutendsten Journalisten der USA war. Lippmann hat sich auch an Propagandaaktivitäten im Ersten Weltkrieg beteiligt und aufgrund dieser Erfahrung...