Previous research has shown that family background still plays a role in educational choices, especially when it comes to elite education. We study how social origin affects the likelihood of pursuing elite or non-elite university education abroad, compared with university education at home. We...

Magnetic nanoparticles can be employed for a broad range of biomedical applications where the knowledge of the distribution of the magnetic nanoparticles is of importance for efficacy, patient’s safety, etc. The need exists to have an as accurate as possible quantification of the unknown...

This paper investigates empirically how unemployment-induced employment-breaks at different career stages influence pension benefits. The analysis is based on German data. I distinguish four different career phases and investigate to what extent the prevailing social security policy compensated...

This paper investigates empirically the influence of government ideology on social policy using German data. Examining the funding and the benefits of social security and public healthcare policy, my results suggest that policies implemented by governments dominated by left- and rightwing...

We study an elimination tournament with heterogenous contestants whose ability is common-knowledge. Each pair-wise match is modeled as an all-pay auction. Equilibrium efforts are in mixed strategies, yielding complex dynamics: endogenous win probabilities in each match depend on other matches’...

We consider a small open economy in which the level of public education funding is determined by popular vote. We show that growth can be enhanced by the introduction of pay-as-you-go pensions even if the growth rate of aggregate wages falls short of the interest rate. The reason is that the...

Dynamic competitive settings may create psychological pressure when feedback about the performance of competitors is provided before the end of the competition. Such psychological pressure could produce a first-mover advantage, despite a priori equal winning probabilities. Using data from a...

We analyze survey evidence on individuals’ willingness to sanction law violations - such as evading taxes, drunk driving and fare dodging - by disapproval or social exclusion. Our data show that people condition their willingness to sanction a norm violation on their belief about its...

We investigate the role of incentives set by a parent firm for competition among its subsidiaries. In a Cournot experiment, four subsidiaries of the same parent operate in the same market. Parents earn a specific share of the joint profit, and can choose how to distribute the remaining surplus...