Rigour versus Relevance impliziert einen Gegensatz, der nicht existiert. Auch die übliche Gleichsetzung von Rigor mit Wissenschaft und Relevanz mit Praxis führt zu falschen Schlüssen. Stattdessen wird gezeigt, dass die Unterscheidung zwischen Rigor und Relevanz inner-halb der Wissenschaft...

The Ifo Institute for Economic Research has been conducting regular business surveyssince its foundation in 1949. The most well-known of Ifo's surveys is the Ifo BusinessSurvey (ifo Konjunkturtest). The micro data of the Ifo Business Survey are accessible toexternal researchers on-site at Ifo as...

Das ifo Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung in München führt seit seiner Gründung im Jahr1949 regelmäßige Unternehmensbefragungen durch. Bisher bestand kein institutionalisierterDatenzugang zu den Mikrodaten für Forscher außerhalb des Institutes. Die Mikrodatenwerden nunmehr im ifo...

Define the riskiness of a gamble as the reciprocal of the absolute risk aversion (ARA) of an individual with constant ARA who is indifferent between taking and not taking that gamble. We characterize this index by axioms, chief among them a “duality” axiom which, roughly speaking, asserts...

The concept of scapegoating is frequently used to explain how opportunistic elites attempt to deflect blame onto vulnerable ethnic minorities, particularly during times of social turmoil. However, the notion of scapegoating is undertheorized in the conflict literature and the question of why...

In this paper we present a reformulation of a lemma due to Lippman and McCall - initially formulated a unique random variable - to be applied to the case of several random variables, and we illustrate its use in the theory of the firm under uncertainty. We have performed this on a recent model...

Consider any investor who fears ruin facing any set of investments that satisfy no-arbitrage. Before investing, he can purchase information about the state of nature in the form of an information structure. Given his prior, information structure 'a' is more informative than information structure...

The paper introduces a notion of complementarity (substitutability) of two signals which requires that in all decision problems each signal becomes more (less) valuable when the other signal becomes available. We provide a general characterization which relates complementarity and...

By means of some simple examples from economics, we elucidatecertain solution tools for the solution of optimal control problems were the system under study undergoes major changes when certain boundaries are crossed. The major changes may be that the state gets a jump discontinuity when...