We analyze Nash equilibria of share and probabilistic contests when players have distributional preferences. If players are sufficiently similar, distributional preferences create multiple equilibria. For the case of only mildly heterogeneous players, equilibrium effort can be lower as well as...

This paper proposes an answer to the question of why social unrest sometimes occurs in the wake of an IMF Structural Adjustment Program (SAP). Under certain circumstances, partly determined by a country’s comparative advantage, a nation’s elite may have an incentive to make transfers to the...

This study discusses the concept of sustainability, in particular with respect to the CDM. In addition, based on cross-section interviews, the sustainability criteria for CDM projects in energy sectors in the studied countries are determined. These criteria could serve as a starting point for...

We present a Stackelberg model of conflict, in which contestants have limited endowments to be put in two separate sectors, thus incorporating salient features of many conflicts. The model is applied to the case of conflict over natural resources. Consistent with amounting empirical evidence...

In this paper we present three simple theoretical models to explain the influence of the possibility to make non-binding announcements on future investment behaviour in public good settings. Our models build on the idea that voluntary contributions to the supply of a public good might be...

This paper makes an attempt to present the economics of credit securitization in a nontechnical way, starting from the description and the analysis of a typical securitization transaction. The paper sketches a theoretical explanation for why tranching, or nonproportional risk sharing, which is...

This paper contributes to the economics of financial institutions risk management by exploring how loan securitization a.ects their default risk, their systematic risk, and their stock prices. In a typical CDO transaction a bank retains through a first loss piece a very high proportion of the...

Infolge der Regionalisierung von Wirtschafts- und Strukturpolitik entstehen entweder vollkommen neue Institutionen (horizontale Regionalisierung) oder Institutionen mit neuen Kompetenzen (vertikale Regionalisierung). Der Erfolg einer Regionalisierungspolitik läßt sich am Grad der...

A strike insurance is integrated into a model based on one-sided private information of the firm. It is shown that the strike insurance will increase the dispute level if payments to the insurance are lump-sum or if payments from the insurance are proportional to wages. However, if wages affect...

The paper aims at a conceptual contribution to the normative economic analysis of rural de-velopment (RD) policies. RD is regarded as a problem of interaction between individuals; (lacking) structural change or the (missing) integration of externalities are therefore recon-structed as...