We present a laboratory experiment on the impact of price framing on consumer decision making. Consumer subjects face a search market where two sellers offer a homogenous good. We examine six different price frames with linear per-unit pricing (that is displayed as such) serving as a benchmark....

[...] The discussion below is organized into four sections. The first reviews the powers of the Commission President. Comparison with heads of government at the national level brings out its weakness. The second examines how Commission Presidents before Barroso approached the office. It shows...

Die Gesundheitssysteme Deutschlands und der Schweiz zählen zu den teuersten der Welt, bringen aber nur mittelmäßige Gesundheitsergebnisse hervor, schöpfen mithin ihre Ressourcen und ihr Leistungspotential nur unzureichend aus. In beiden Ländern gilt die starke Abschottung von...

Motivated by recent disasters, this paper analyzes the risk sharing aspect in a federation. The regions can be hit by a shock leading to losses that occur with an exogenous probability and in a stochastically independent way. The regions can spend effort on selfinsurance to reduce the size of...

Political parties are often argued to compete for voters by stressing issues they feel they own - a strategy known as 'selective emphasis'. While usually seen as an electorally rewarding strategy, this article argues that cultivating your themes in the public debate is not guaranteed to be...

Research linking civic engagement to citizens' democratic values, generalized trust, cooperative norms, and so on often implicitly assumes such connections are stable over time. This article argues that, due to changes in the broader institutional environment, the engagement-values relation is...

Over the past two decades, reliance on short-term contracted staff has increased in government institutions across the Western world. This tendency towards contracted government may be strengthened during periods of economic and financial stress. This article therefore poses the following...

Members of parliament in many countries are legally permitted to execute (un)paid jobs in addition to their political mandate. It is often argued that such moonlighting activities are unproblematic for the chain of democratic delegation and accountability as long as outside interests/earnings...

Victorious alliances often fight about the spoils of war. We consider experimentally when members of victorious alliances accept a peaceful division of the spoils, and when they fight against each other, and how the inability to commit to a peaceful division affects their effort contributions in...