Traditional power indices ignore preferences and strategic interaction. Equilibrium analysis of particular non-cooperative decision procedures is unsuitable for normative analysis and assumes typically unavailable information. These points drive a lingering debate about the right approach to...

The European Union (EU) has moved towards bicameralism, making the codecision procedure its most important mechanism for decision making. To gauge if European Parliament (EP) and Council of Ministers (CM) are equally powerful codecision makers', understanding of the final stage of the procedure...

This paper analyzes the a priori influence of the European Parliament (EP) and the Council of Ministers (CM) on legislation of the European Union adopted under its codecision procedure. In contrast to studies which use conventional power indices, both institutions are assumed to act...

The paper analyzes the appointment of the European Commission as a strategic game between members of the EU's Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. The focal equilibrium results in Commissioners that duplicate policy preferences of national Council representatives. Different internal...

Traditional power indices are not suited to take account of explicit preferences, strategic interaction, and particular decision procedures. This paper studies a new way to measure decision power, based on fully specified spatial preferences and strategic interaction in an explicit voting game...

The paper analyzes the appointment of the European Commission as a strategic game between members of the European Parliament and the Council. The focal equilibrium results in Commissioners that duplicate policy preferences of national Council representatives. Different internal decision rules...

Imposing a minimum quality standard (MQS) is conventionally regarded as harmful if firms compete in quantities. This, however, ignores dynamic effects. We show that an MQS can hinder collusion, resulting in dynamic welfare gains that reduce and may even outweigh the usual static losses. Verdicts...

If the (un)trustworthy are rare, people will talk about them, making their detectionmore reliable and / or less costly. When, however, both types appear in large numbers,detecting (un)trustworthiness will be considerably more difficult and possibly too costly.Based on Güth and Kliemt (2000) we...

The indirect evolutionary approach integrates forward-looking evaluation of opportunitiesand adaptation in the light of the past. Subjective motivation determines behavior,but long-run evolutionary success of motivational types depends on objective factors only.This can justify intrinsic...

Economists usually treat human behavior as being determined by the shadow of the future, while most other social scientists point to the shadow of the past. This paper considers experimental evidence relevant to the controversy and tries to reconcile both explanations of human behavior with each...