We study the coevolution of cooperation, preferences, and cooperative signals in an environment where individuals engage in a signaling-extended prisoner's dilemma. We prove the existence of a cooperative equilibrium constituted by a (set of) limit cycle(s) and stabilized by the dynamic...

This paper estimates a gravity model of trade to evaluate the trade effects of the Euro on sectoral trade within the Euro Zone, the CFA Franc Zone and between the Eurozone and the CFA Franc Zone, when CFA countries acquired fixed rates against the non-francophone Eurozone members. The formation...

In this paper, we estimate pass-through rates of import price changes to retail prices across retailers and consumers for apparel purchases in Germany for the period of 2000 to 2007. We find that high-price retailers do not pass through changes in the import price. Pass-through rates for...

Markets for expert services are characterized by information asymmetries between experts and consumers. We analyze the effects of consumer information, where consumers suffer from either a minor or serious problem and only experts can infer the appropriate treatment. Consumer information is a...

We refine the understanding of individual preferences across social lotteries, whereby the payoffs of a pair of subjects are exposed to random shocks. We find that aggregate behavior is ex-post and ex-ante inequality averse, but also that there is a wide variety of individual preferences and...

We analyze the impact of increasing longevity on technological progress within an R&D-based endogenous growth framework and test the model's implications on OECD data from 1960 to 2011. The central hypothesis derived in the theoretical part is that — by raising the incentives of households to...

We set up a simple overlapping generation model that allows us to distinguish between life expectancy and active life expectancy. We show that individuals optimally adjust to a longer active life by educating more and, if the labor supply elasticity is high enough, by supplying less labor. When...

Lobbying a coalition government is different than lobbying a single-party government, since in the case of a coalition government, the interest group can intervene in the intragovernmental decision process. In the case where the interest group likes the status quo more than the surplus...

Unified growth theory predicts that the timing of the fertility transition is a key determinant of contemporary comparative development, as it marks the onset of the take-off to sustained growth. Neoclassical growth theory presupposes a take-off, and explains comparative development by...

Workers in the US and other developed countries retire no later than a century ago and spend a significantly longer part of their life in school, implying that they stay less years in the work force. The facts of longer schooling and simultaneously shorter working life are seemingly hard to...