Dieser Beitrag skizziert das ordonomische Forschungsprogramm einer ökonomischen Theorie der Moral und stellt die Grundzüge einer mit dieser Methode arbeitenden Wirtschafts- und Unternehmensethik vor: Die Ordonomik versteht sich als eine rational-choice- basierte Analyse der Interdependenz von...

Activist NGOs increasingly oppose industrial projects that have nevertheless been approved by public regulators. To understand this recent rise in NGO activism, we develop a theory of optimal regulation in which a regulated industry seeks to undertake a project that may be harmful to society. On...

This paper aims at contributing to a better understanding of the conditions of self-enforcing democracy by analyzing the recent wave of autocratic transitions. Based on a game-theoretic framework, we work out the conditions under which governments may induce the diverse public authorities to...

We explore how public opinion polls affect candidates' campaign spending in political competition. Generally, polls lead to (more) asymmetric behavior. Under a majority rule there always exists an equilibrium in which the initially more popular candidate invests more in the campaign and thereby...

This paper shows that peer pressure may lead to dynamic convergence to a norm that is skewed with respect to preferences in society, yet is endogenously upheld by the population. Moreover, a skewed norm will often be more sustainable than a representative norm. This may explain the skewness of...

We analyze the consequences of activism in a regulated industry where the regulator has been captured by the industry. Unlike ordinary economic agents, activists are insensitive to monetary incentives. Moreover, they are less well informed than regulators and their actions generate dead-weight...

We examine whether economic and military competence of political leaders affect their duration in office. We introduce leader heterogeneity in the selectorate theory of Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003) and derive the hypothesis that in the presence of a revolutionary threat, economic competence...

Activist NGOs increasingly oppose industrial projects that have nevertheless been approved by public regulators. To understand this recent rise in NGO activism, we develop a theory of optimal regulation in which a regulated industry seeks to undertake a project that may be harmful to society. On...

The paper re-examines the idea that a family can be viewed as a community governed by a self-enforcing constitution, and extends existing results in two directions. First, it identifies circumstances in which a constitution is renegotiation-proof. Second, it introduces parental altruism. The...

A distinctive feature of recent revolutions was the key role of social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube). We study the role of social media in mobilization. In a simple model we assume that while social media allow to observe all previous decisions, mass media only give aggregate...