The central hypothesis of this paper is that there may be situations in which the traditional approach to institutional analysis is of limited applicability. Such an approach, which has been called 'comparative institutional analysis', consists of comparing institutional environments and...

Previous studies have found underestimation of risk, or overconfidence, to be a key factor in entrepreneurship. We use a simple model of competitive equilibrium to show that an irrational under-estimation of risk provides a competitive advantage leading to a greater chance of survival under...

Insurance contracts are frequently modelled as principal--agent relationships. Although it is commonly assumed that the principal, in this case the insurer, has complete freedom to design the contract, the problem formulation in much of the principal--agent literature presumes that the contract...

Government finance reforms in the United States have encouraged public entities to focus on their core mission and to use outsourcing to improve efficiency, yet little is known about whether these reforms impact rural areas differently than nonrural areas. This paper analyzes the provision of...

The traditional land-grant university mission is to provide instruction in agriculture and related fields. The universities developed to fulfill that mission were created in the late 1800s in an era of relatively small-scaled, homogenous farming operations. Today, land-grant universities are...

The traditional land-grant university mission is to provide instruction in agriculture and related fields. The universities developed to fulfill that mission were created in the late 1800s in an era of relatively small-scaled, homogenous farming operations. Today, land-grant universities are...

This research examines the effect of three factors—cheap talk, voting, and the status quo of the donation—on the voluntary contribution mechanism (VCM). Using undergraduate business students, results show that contributions as a percent of income in the last of ten rounds range from 18% for...

In this study, we specify a disaggregated vector autoregression model (VAR) to analyze the behavior of employment in three Southern California counties during two different types of aggregate economic downturns. Using this model, we estimate the impact of hypothetical, one-time shocks to...

Este trabajo explora las transformaciones contemporaneas del consumo alimentario en los paises desarrollados y su repercusion en el sistema agroalimentario, con particular mencion al caso espanol. Tras un breve examen de la evolucion reciente del consumo alimentario en terminos de magnitdues...