Using a sample of Europeans aged 50+ from twelve countries in the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) we analyse the role of poor material conditions as a determinant of changes in health over a four-year period. We find that poverty defined with respect to relative incomes...

Open source software (OSS) is a public good. A self-interested individual would consider providing such software, if the benefits he gained from having it justified the cost of programming. Nevertheless each agent is tempted to free ride and wait for others to develop the software instead. This...

Vor zehn Jahren hat der deutsche Wissenschaftsrat mit seiner Forderung nach einer Verstärkung der akademischen Forschungsleistungen an den deutschen Wirtschaftsforschungsinstituten einen Regimewechsel eingeleitet. Der Anstoß wurde von der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft, der Dachgesellschaft der...

Recently the software industry has experienced fundamental changes in market structure through the entry of open source competitors, e.g. Linux‘s entry into the operating systems market. In a simple model we examine the effects of such a change in market structure from monopoly to duopoly...

Fairtrade certification aims at transferring wealth from the consumer to the farmer; however, coffee passes through many hands before reaching final consumers. Bringing together retail, wholesale, and stock market data, this study estimates how much more consumers are paying for...

Research and development (R&D) is a common process in for-profit organizations. Despite the benefits, it is not routinely practiced in nonprofit organizations, in part because it is difficult to identify the effects of programs that are designed to involve individuals over long periods of time....

In response to increasing health expenditures and a high number of physician visits, the German government introduced a copayment for ambulatory care in 2004 for individuals with statutory health insurance (SHI). Because persons with private insurance were exempt from the copayments, this health...

Case and Deaton (2015) document that, since 1998, midlife mortality rates are increasing for white non-Hispanics in the US. This trend is driven by deaths from drug overdoses, suicides, and alcohol-related diseases, termed as deaths of despair, and by the subgroup of low-educated individuals. In...

Based on a dynamic life cycle model, this study analyzes health-related risks of consumption and old-age poverty. The model allows for health effects on employment risks, on productivity, on longevity, the correlation between health risks, productivity and preferences, and the financial...

This study uses German social security records to provide novel evidence about the heterogeneity in life expectancy by lifetime earnings and, additionally, documents the distributional implications of this earnings-related heterogeneity. We find a strong association between lifetime earnings and...