This paper investigates the effects of different prize structures on the effort choices of participants in two-stage elimination contests. A format with a single prize is shown to maximize total effort over both stages, but induces low effort in stage 1 and high effort in stage 2. By contrast, a...

I show that the effect of heterogeneity on contest investments depends on the structure of the competition, which implies that heterogeneity matters for optimal contest design. This insight helps to explain empirical evidence on the comparison of different contest structures.

This paper studies the interactions between democratization and theemergence of rule of law. We propose a model in which heterogeneousindividuals can make costly investments to protect their income againstexpropriation. The public enforcement of property rights is chosen bythe enfranchised...

Many economic decisions involve a substantial amount of uncertainty, and therefore crucially depend on how individuals process probabilistic information. In this paper, we investigate the capability for probability judgment in a representative sample of the German population. Our results show...

Starting in January 2003, Germany implemented the first two so-calledHartz reforms, followed by the third and fourth packages of Hartzreforms in January 2004 and January 2005, respectively. The aim of thesereforms was to accelerate labor market flows and reduce unemploymentduration. Without...

We investigate job competition among job seekers and vacancy competition among firms extending the job competition model proposed by Anderson and Burgess (Anderson, P.M., Burgess, S.M., 2000. Empirical matching functions: Estimation and interpretation using state level data. Review of Economics...

This article studies the endogenous evolution of economic and political institutions and the interdependencies with the process of economic development. Favourable economic institutions in the form of a state of law and absence of societal conflict arise in equilibrium. Democracies are neither...

This paper sheds new light on the role of regional labor market conditions for regional mobility. We study competition for vacant jobs along two dimensions - between employed and unemployed job searchers, and between resident and non-resident job searchers - within a simple matching framework....

This paper investigates to what extent individuals’ risk preferences are correlated with the cross-sectional earnings risk of their occupation. We exploit data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which contains a direct survey question about willingness to take risks that has been shown to...

This paper shows that conventional empirical estimates of matching functions are systematically biased, because unobservable and endogenous search behaviour, such as on-the-job search by workers or the use of different search channels by firms, is neglected. I propose an approach for recovering...