Risk-neutral individuals take more risky decisions when they have limited liability. Risk-neutral managers may not when acting as agents under contract and taking costly actions to acquire information before taking decisions. Limited liability makes it optimal to increase the reward for outcomes...

Models of labor supply derived from stochastic utility representations and discretized sets of feasible hours of work have gained popularity because they are more practical than the standard approaches based on marginal calculus. In this paper we argue that practicality is not the only feature...

This paper examines a life-cycle cost concept that applies to both manufacturing and service industries in which upfront capacity investments are essential. Borrowing from the energy literature, we refer to this cost measure as the levelized product cost (LC). Per unit of output, the levelized...

In Switzerland, two key church institutions - the Conference of Swiss Bishops (CSB) and the Federation of Protestant Churches (FPC) - make public recommendations on how to vote for certain referenda. We leverage this unique situation to directly measure religious organizations ́power to shape...

In this paper, we study a two-country dynamic setup with environmental externalities and potential model misspecification in relation to this public good. Under model uncertainty, robust policies help to correct the inefficiencies associated with free riding on public good provision, implying...

Theory of mind and individual preferences are important determinants in social decision making. The current study examined in a large sample whether being a cooperative preference type is related with better theory of mind skills. Furthermore, by testing adolescents and adults, we examined the...

In a laboratory experiment, we measure subjects' willingness to pay for a transparently useless decision right concerning the choice between two real effort tasks. We also elicit for each participant her change in beliefs about the likelihood of receiving her preferred task if she rather than...

Concern about potential free riding in the provision of public goods has a long history. More recently, experimental economists have turned their attention to the conditions under which free riding would be expected to occur. A model of free riding is provided here which demonstrates that...

WTO negotiations deal predominantly with bound - besides applied - tariff rates. But, how can reductions in tariffs ceilings, i.e. tariff rates that no exporter may ever actually be confronted with, generate market access? The answer to this question relates to the effects of tariff bindings on...

Government or company decisions on whom to hire are mostly delegated to politicians, public sector officials or human resources and procurement managers. Due to anti-corruption laws, agents cannot sell contracts or positions that they are delegated to decide upon. Even if bribing is ruled out,...