After the fall of the Berlin wall, the public administrations in Central and Eastern European countries have had to adapt to an enormous number of changes in a relatively short time. Their civil servants are still facing a constantly changing regulatory framework which needs implementation and...

We investigate the effects of information feedback in rent-seeking games with two different contest structures. In the share contest a contestant receives a share of the rent equal to her share of rent-seeking expenditures, while in the lottery contest a contestant wins the entire rent with...

This paper questions whether informative feedback on consumption can nudge water saving behavioral change. For this purpose, we launched a five-month online information campaign which involved equipping around 1,000 households located in the province of Milan (Italy) with a smart meter. Treated...

This paper provides a new way to identify conditional cooperation in a real-time version of the standard voluntary contribution mechanism. Our approach avoids most drawbacks of the traditional procedures because it relies on endogenous cycle lengths, which are defined by the number of...

This paper briefly reviews the current literature on learning in economics from a behavioral point of view. It critically compares theory with aspects of learning in real-life and with evidence from laboratory experiments, and argues that most customary approaches lack criteria for their...

A government that regularly procures the services of construction companies wants to minimize its costs. The instrument it can use is the level of information feedback given to the firms in the market. Theoretically, the competition between firms is supposed to drive prices to the lowest...

This paper provides a new way to identify conditional cooperation in a real-time version of the standard voluntary contribution mechanism. We define contribution cycles as the number of contributors a player waits for before committing to a further contribution, and use a permutation test on...

We investigate the effects of information feedback in rent-seeking games with two different contest structures. In the deterministic contest a contestant receives a share of the rent equal to her share of rent-seeking expenditures, while in the stochastic contest a contestant wins the entire...

This study uses high-frequency appliance-level electricity consumption data for 124 apartments over 24 months to provide a better understanding of appliance-level electricity consumption behavior. We conduct our analysis in a standardized set of apartments with similar appliances, which allows...