The study analyzes and predicts how individual preferences and majoritarian political decisions about the extent of paternalism in a society depend on the distribution of genuine preferences for economic activities, the distribution of information about these preferences, and the distribution of...

Climate experts delegated by countries to COP 24 and COP 25 show much agreement on international energy policy measures in the context of climate protection. Experts on average also agree with the proposal of compensating countries with large oil and gas reserves for not extracting them. But...

Unlike produced commodities, the extraction and sale of oil or natural gas is an "asset swap": assets stored in the ground are converted into financial assets. The value of assets in the ground is reduced by the amount taken out and sold. This is important for assessing the coercive power of the...

We examine whether collective memories on the aid&reform programs chosen to handle the 2010 European debt crisis differ between citizens from borrower and lender countries. We use new international survey data for non-experts and experts in member countries of the euro area. The results show...

A central issue that is discussed in climate policy is the fear of owners of stocks of fossil hydrocarbon deposits that high CO2 taxes and bans on the combustion use of hydrocarbons will turn their stocks into stranded assets. They might react by extracting and selling their reserves today: a...

We examine whether collective memories on the aid&reform programs chosen to handle the 2010 European debt crisis differ between citizens from borrower and lender countries. We use new international survey data for non-experts and experts in member countries of the euro area. The results show...

A central issue that is discussed in climate policy is the fear of owners of stocks of fossil hydrocarbon deposits that high CO2 taxes and bans on the combustion use of hydrocarbons will turn their stocks into stranded assets. They might react by extracting and selling their reserves today: a...

We examine whether collective memories on the aid&reform programs chosen to handle the 2010 European debt crisis differ between citizens from borrower and lender countries. We use new international survey data for non-experts and experts in member countries of the euro area. The results show...

We study self-selection into earning money in an honest or dishonest fashion based on individuals' attitudes toward truthful reporting. We propose a decision-theoretic framework where individuals' willingness to pay for honest earnings is determined by their (behavioral) lying costs. Our...

We study collective action under adverse incentives: each member of the group has a given budget ('use-it-or-lose-it') that is his private information and that can be used for contributions to make the group win a prize and for internal fights about this very prize. Even in the face of such...