Deterrence has been a crucial element in fighting terrorism, both in actual politics and rational choice analyses of terrorism. But there are superior strategies to deterrence. One is to make terrorist attacks less attractive. Another to raise the opportunity cost – rather than the material...

Trends in arts and culture tend to be longer-lasting and less fragile than in other fields such as clothing design. Most herding models are not able to explain such stability, instead predicting informational cascades to be fragile and fads to be frequent. The present contribution is able to...

This paper surveys the literature on the economics of museums. It first discusses aspects of the demand and supply of museum services. The museum behaviour is then analysed from a neoclassical and a more institutional perspective. Public policy issues connected with museums are discussed. The...

In view of recent corporate scandals, it is argued that corporate governance can learn from public governance. Institutions devised to control and discipline the behavior of executives in the political sphere can give new insights into how to improve the governance of firms. Proposals in four...

Terrorism will be high on the political agenda for many years to come. Various policies are open to a government fighting terrorism but, in any case, considerable costs are involved. In the competition for political support, the costs and benefits of anti-terrorism policies will be debated....

This paper analyzes and compares different ways of assessing how people perceived impending threats of war in the past. Conventional Nordic historiography of World War II claims there were few, if any, people in the Nordic countries who perceived a significantly increased threat of war between...

Tax compliance has been studied in economics by analysing the individual decision of a representative person between paying and evading taxes. A neglected aspect of tax compliance is the interaction of taxpayers and tax authorities. The relationship between the two actors can be understood as an...

Non-monetary incentives in the form of awards have so far escaped the attention of economists despite their widespread use. This paper presents an experiment conducted online at IBM to assess the impact of these kinds of extrinsic incentives. Introducing a hypothetical award has statistically...

Due to its formality and highly analytic thinking, economics is often attributed a leading role among the social sciences and a prominent position as contributor to economic or social issues in the real world. Fact is, however, that the empirical proof for such a claim is either missing or...

Survival in academia depends on publications in refereed journals. Authors only get their papers accepted if they intellectually prostitute themselves by slavishly following the demands made by anonymous referees without property rights on the journals they advise. Intellectual prostitution is...