Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. Social Network DeGroot Model: Consensus and convergence speed -- Chapter 3. Consensus reaching through adding minimum interactions -- Chapter 4. Strategic Manipulations with trust relationships -- Chapter 5. Risk control in the evolution of public opinions...

This paper studies unethical behavior by groups and provides systematic evidence on how lying decisions are affected by group size and group gender composition. We conduct an online experiment with 1,677 participants (477 groups) where group members can communicate with each other via a novel...

In their book The Power to Tax, Brennan and Buchanan have pointed to a central weakness of the traditional theory of public finance and especially of the theory of optimal taxation: This approach overlooked the problem of governmental power and the tendency of this power to be abused. It was...

Provides empirical evidence of significant lack of relevant knowledge of some public goods and experiential commodities. It also analyses whether information provision about the attributes or characteristics of commodities is likely to result in individuals’ finding their ‘true’...

We consider the following question: does market failure justify redistribution? We argue that the general answer to this question is no, in the sense that policies for correcting market failures do not aim at producing a "desirable" income distribution. This follows from the fact that, by...

What determines the enforcement of deregulation reform of business activities? What are the outcomes of deregulation? We address these questions using an episode of a drastic reform in Russia between 2001 and 2004 which liberalized registration, licensing, and inspections. Based on the analysis...

How might we model the historical processes which transported Mozart's compositions in eighteenth century Vienna to their performance in twentieth century Japan? There is a need to look beyond the neo-classical economics tradition. A description is given of how cultural taste gives direction to...