This paper presents the first comprehensive Target database of the Eurozone and interprets it from an economic perspective. We show that the Target accounts measure the intra-Eurozone balances of payments and indirectly also international credit given through the Eurosystem in terms of...

One-shot interaction and repeated interaction often co-exist in the real world. We study possible behavioral effects of this co-existence in a principal-agent setting, in which a principal simultaneously employs a permanent and a temporary agent. Our experimental results indicate that there is...

Recent technological advances have prompted both utopian and dystopian visions of the transformation of work. The design of humane work environments requires not only a thorough understanding of technological affordances but also-critically-of work practices and their development. Many workers...

We analyze the economic effects of a developer’s connectedness in the electronic game industry. Knowledge spillovers between developers are likely to be of special relevance in this knowledge-intensive and regionally concentrated industry. We calculate social network measures for a...

We develop a new metric for the distribution of educational achievement across countries that can further track the cognitive skill distribution within countries and over time. Cross-country growth regressions generate a close relationship between educational achievement and GDP growth that is...

A PAYGO system may serve as insurance against not having children and as an enforcement device for ungrateful children who are unwilling to pay their parents a pension. In fact, the latter was Bismarck’s historic motive for introducing this system. It is true that the PAYGO system reduces the...

Globalisation means gains from trade, but not for everyone. As gains from trade come along with factor price convergence, substantial fractions of the working classes in the high-wage countries of the West are likely to belong to the group of losers. In this situation it is tempting for the...

The forces of the market and systems competition bring about economic and social convergence in Europe, and there is no need for social policies at the EU level. Social harmonization would distort migration flows and slow down the speed of economic convergence. National welfare states will be...