Drawing on a new analytical framework provided by the economic theory of optimal legal areas, this paper identifies the factors determining the optimal size of the European Union. It applies this theory to the question of how enlargement affects the welfare of the current and the new members of...

Players from two populations, predictors and predictees, are randomly matched in a game--theoretic version of Newcomb's Problem. Predictors are able to predict the predictees' choices by observing their type. There are two types of predictees, those who take their predictability into account by...

The churches in Germany are analyzed as multiproduct firms. Even though these enterprises raise their revenues in part through the tax system, they find themselves in a crisis: the number of customers is persistently decreasing. Starting with the idea that salvation is a scarce economic good,...

In Economics, like in any social science, empirical tests of theoretical results face the problem that the economy cannot be reproduced in laboratories. Drawing on the experience of Psychology, Experimental Economics nowadays uses stylised experiments to test at least the basic assumptions of...

The theory of competition as a discovery procedure argues that the results of this procedure cannot be predicted because of its very nature as a discovery procedure. If this were true, this would imply the impossibilty of testing whether competition actually works as predicted. This article...