Political institutions matter for the incentives of politicians to implement economic reforms. This dissertation presents tools of analysis for understanding how political institutions constrain and shape the incentives of political decision-makers. Thus, it identifies reasons for why current...

This dissertation analyzes the impact of network externalities on R&D competition in an oligopolistic industry. It focuses on the level of R&D investments, the social efficiency of those efforts and the role of networks compatibility. The analysis is taken under different specifications and...

This dissertation is a collection of three independent research papers and three chapters with surveys introducing into the respective literature. The first paper analyses the effects of introducing Inequity Aversion in a Moral Hazard Problem, the second paper is about optimal delegation in...

The thesis contains three independent papers. The first examines why women in Ireland had high mortality rates relative to men at the end of the 19th century. The second searches for the determinants of German east-west migration of labour force. The third finally tests empirically the theory of...

This thesis contains four essays on technological and organizational change in health care. Although each chapter can be read independently, there is a central thread resumed in each chapter. The interaction of patient, physician and insurer in the health care market is analysed in different...

Many reasons have been put forward explaining the rate of economic growth in developing countries. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate whether refugees and conflict help to explain Africa and other developing regions’ rate of economic growth. Economists, especially development...