Economic theory predicts that military conscription is associated with static inefficiencies as well as with dynamic distortions of the accumulation of human and physical capital. Relative to an economy with an all-volunteer force, output levels and growth rates should be lower in countries that...

We analyze the comparative statics of optimal decisions under uncertainty when preferences are represented by two-moment, mean-variance utility functions. We relate our findings to concepts for risk attitudes that have recently been proposed for the expected utility approach. In the...

We study the optimal duration of contracts in a principal-agent framework with both moral hazard and adverse selection. Agents decide on a contract-specific and non-verifiable investment. Incentive compatibility requires that initial contracts, which serve to screen the ability of newly hired...

In fiscal interaction, a policy is evolutionarily stable if, once adopted by all governments, jurisdictions that deviate from it fare worse than those that stick to it. Evolutionary stability is the appropriate solution concept for models of imitative learning (policy mimicking). We show that...

Immer wenn wir Kaufentscheidungen treffen, hinterlassen wir Spuren, oft ohne dass wir dies überhaupt bemerken: beim online shoppen, der Handy Recherche oder der Verwendung einer Kundenkarte. Preisanpassungen in Echtzeit, intelligente Systeme für die Kundenkommunikation - Daten und Algorithmen...

Although voter turnout in the 2013 general election to the German Bundestag differed considerably across income brackets, the income distribution of voters did not differ, in a statistically significant way, from that of the entire population. The non-uniform turnout, thus, is unlikely to affect...

We study the efficiency and distributional consequences of establishing and abolishing the draft in a dynamic model with overlapping generations, taking into account endogenous human capital formation as well as government budget constraints. The introduction of the draft initially benefits the...