We analyze some macroeconomic implications that follow from the fact that people tend to consume higher-quality goods as their incomes rise. The model involves two sectors: one producing a homogeneous good and the other producing a product with variable levels of quality. Both sectors use...

In recent years a large number of experimental studies have documented the existence of strong reciprocity among humans. Strong reciprocity means that people willingly repay gifts and punish the violation of cooperation and fairness norms even in anonymous one-shot encounters with genetically...

The new information and communication technology, ICT, induces households to take over tasks from firms and government agencies, using tools and systems provided by these very same organizations. The result is often joint production activities. We argue that the importance of ICT for the...

Two macro models - one for a closed economy and the other for a small open economy - are used to examine the scope for income redistribution and employment creation. In particular, the introduction of both a guaranteed annual income (basic income) and an employment subsidy are examined, and...

The paper analyses the interaction between economic incentives and work norms in the context of social insurance. If the work norm is endogenous in the sense that it is weaker when the population share of beneficiaries is higher, then voters will choose less generous bene.ts than otherwise. We...

This paper presents a new approach to the theory of the firm by identifying factor complementarities as central to the determination of the firm's boundaries. The factor complementarities, as well as economies of scale and scope. We examine the tradeoff between the gains froom these...

Children who can count on support from altruistic parents may not try hard to succeed in the labor market. Moreover, parental altruism makes withdrawal of such support non-credible. To promote work effort, parents may want to instill norms which later cause their children to experience guilt or...

In this paper we argue that strong political economy forces explain the rush of the EU to expand eastwards. We use a model of vertical product differentiation in order to claim that technologically- advanced EU firms (residing in high-income member countries) prefer a mutual market-opening with...

This paper evaluates two approaches to work-sharing by examining both within the same macro model. The standard approach involves imposing a quantity constraint on labour market participants (a maximum number of standard hours for each worker). This approach is compared to a revenue-neutral...

In this paper we use a model of vertical product differentiation to cast doubt on the general validity of the import demand function as specified in macroeconomic models. The empiricai importance of our theoretical concerns is then examined with the aid of two hypotheses. According to the first...