This paper analyses the choice between risk-sharing and risk-pooling income-contingent loans for higher education of risk-averse individuals who differ in their ability to benefit from education and inherited wealth. The paper identifies the possible outcomes of a majority vote between the two...

Contests are situations in which a set of agents compete for a valuable object, rent or award. The present paper analyzes difference-form group contests, that is, contests fought among groups and where their probability of victory depends on the difference of their effective efforts. First, we...

The design of a tax system is a daunting task. Economies have become increasingly complex, which makes the design of taxes has to take into account behavioral taxpayers' responses -- including mobility -- but also tax planning issues. Additionally, increasing inequality trends put more pressure...

We study whether local land use policies are modified in response to enhanced demand for building generated by a new highway. We also examine the extent to which this effect affects building activity. We focus on the case of Spain during the last housing boom (1995-2007). We assembled a new...

The standard expected utility model of tax evasion predicts that evasion is decreasing in the marginal tax rate (the Yitzhaki puzzle). The existing literature disagrees on whether prospect theory overturns the puzzle. We disentangle four distinct elements of prospect theory and find loss...

Crime risk perception is known to be an important determinant of individual well-being. It is therefore crucial that we understand the factors affecting this perception so that governments can identify the (public) policies that might reduce it. Among such policies, public resources devoted to...

Despite the high upfront financial costs associated with the existing technologies for energy storage they have become more appealing in recent years in response to the increasing importance of non-dispatchable sources of generation in the energy systems of developed countries. One of the...

Does our ability to predict the performance of new ventures improve in the years after start-up? We investigate the growth and survival of 6247 new ventures that are tracked using the customer records at Barclays Bank. We put forward Gambler's Ruin as a simple theory for understanding new...

We build a framework linking competition in the media market to political participation. Media outlets report on the ability of candidates running for office and compete for audience through their choice of slant. Citizens consume news only if the expected utility of being informed about...

We analyze the determining factors of access to non-formal professional training in Spain and their evolution in recent years. Specifically, a comparison is made between a moment during a period of economic growth (2007) and the current crisis period (2012). The data used is from the...