Existing empirical evidence suggests that entrepreneurs are optimists, a finding researchers often interpret as evidence of a behavioral bias in entrepreneurial decision-making. We revisit this claim by analyzing an unusually large survey dataset (180,814 responses) that allows us to create a...

The idea of corporate social responsibility (CSR) is based on voluntary responsibility of companies for their operations in economic, social and environmental spheres as well as for ethical behavior. In accounting, it is reflected in the form of social accounting which deals with disclosing...

Increasing participation rates in pupil surveys has become an important challenge for empirical educational research. In this paper we investigate whether combining a monetary incentive with a personalised invitation to participate in a survey increases the response rate of secondary school...

Evaluating a new survey dataset of German consumers, we test whether individual consumption plans are formed according to an Euler equation derived from consumption life-cycle models. Estimating several consumption Euler equations, the results are mostly in line with the theory: We find evidence...

We propose a fast approximate Metropolis-Hastings algorithm for large data sets embedded in a design based approach. Here, the loglikelihood ratios involved in the Metropolis-Hastings acceptance step are considered as data. The building block is one single subsample from the complete data set,...

We propose a novel way to measure the rule of law intensity of exports at the goods level based on nearly 100 million disaggregated bilateral trade flows around the globe. We categorise goods into three groups: fragmented, primary and other. The theoretical literature on holdup problems...

Evaluating a new survey dataset of German consumers, we test whether individual consumption plans are formed according to an Euler equation derived from consumption life-cycle models. Estimating several consumption Euler equations, the results are mostly in line with the theory: We find evidence...

The ever-growing population of India, along with the increasing competition for water for productive uses in different sectors - especially irrigated agriculture and related local water systems and drainage - poses a challenge in an effort to improve water quality and sanitation. In rural and...