In this paper we reply to Binmore and Shaked’s criticism of the Fehr-Schmidt model of inequity aversion. We put the theory and their arguments into perspective and show that their criticism is not substantiated. Finally, we briefly comment on the main challenges for future research on...

The quantity theory is disjunct to the hard core of general equilibrium theory. It does not relate to the formal foundations of standard economics and, vice versa, from the behavioral axioms of standard economics a rationale for using money cannot be derived. The present paper leaves the...

The equalization of profit rates as the outcome of free competition is one of the oldest tenets in theoretical economics. Being intuitively convincing its premises and implications, though, are not well defined. As Walras put it: ‘To state a theory is one thing; to prove it is another.’...

The core problem of economics is that the representative economist never managed to keep political and theoretical economics properly apart. The mixture is toxic indeed. As Joan Robinson said about what parades as economics: Scrap the lot and start again. Yet, the question then arises where to...

In this paper we give an overview, with special emphasis on Germany, of the recent development of the market for venture capital. We analyse the financial contracting problems that arise when entrepreneurs need capital from outside investors, and demonstrate how these problems are addressed by...

High-performance work systems give workers more discretion, thereby increasing effort productivity but also shirking opportunities. We show experimentally that screening for work attitude and labor market competition are causal determinants of the viability of high-performance work systems, and...

Contingent ownership structures are prevalent in joint ventures. We offer an explanation based on the investment incentives provided by such an arrangement. We consider a holdup problem in which two parties make relationship-specific investments sequentially to generate a joint surplus in the...

We propose a theory of ex post inefficient renegotiation that is based on loss aversion. When two parties write a long-term contract that has to be renegotiated after the realization of the state of the world, they take the initial contract as a reference point to which they compare gains and...