How should intermediaries influence the insurance demand decision? The answer must refer to the interdependence of economic determinants and legal duties. Intermediaries potentially guide demand decisions by delivering objective information and by considering individuals' situation and economic...

We propose a political theory for the slow adoption of technology in sports and other contests. We investigate players' preferences for new technology that improves contest accuracy. Modeling accuracy as the elasticity of "production" in a standard Tullock contest, we show that players may be...

In this paper we present the first evidence for a link between foreign ownership and credit constraints for Germany, one of the world's leading target countries for foreign direct investment. Furthermore, we contribute to the literature by investigating the impact of a foreign acquisition on the...

This paper contributes to the literature by documenting for the first time the contribution of adding (and dropping) goods and countries of origin to the sharp increase in imports of goods in the German economy as a whole during the Great Import Recovery in 2009/2010. The empirical investigation...

This paper proposes a new likelihood-based panel cointegration rank test which extends the test of Örsal & Droge (2012) (henceforth Panel SL test) to allow for cross-sectional dependence. The dependence is modelled by unobserved common factors which affect the variables in each cross-section...

Only recently have the aspects of pollution and environmental protection entered into the empirical literature about international firm activities. The present paper is the first firmlevel study on the link between foreign ownership and environmental protection in Germany. We find that, ceteris...

Through disaggregating public expenditures by economic functions this paper offers a new perspective on the existence and effectiveness of electorally motivated expenditure policy. The aim of the paper is to provide more detailed information on the specific expenditure categories by which...

This is one of the first studies to estimate a popularity function at the micro-level. Using German micro-level data (GGSS/ALLBUS) for the years 1991, 1992, 1998, and 2008, we show that a positive assessment of the economy significantly improves government popularity while negative evaluations...

Empirical studies analyzing the determinants of U.S. presidential popularity have delivered quite inconclusive results concerning the role of economic variables by assuming linear relationships. We employ penalized spline smoothing in the context of semi-parametric additive mixed models and...

Even after four decades of research it remains unclear, whether presidential popularity depends on the state of the economy. While about half of all studies for the United States find a significant effect of unemployment and inflation on presidential popularity, the others do not. Additional...