This paper presents evidence from a field experiment designed to evaluate the efficacy of anonymous application procedures. While the policy evaluation itself is of interest, more importantly the experiment provides a unique opportunity to detect race based differential treatment in a controlled...

This paper considers the problem of a decision maker who is faced with a dynamic decision problem with several alternatives, and additionally can engage in prior consultation on one of the alternatives. Information received from others is coarse. When consulting on an alternative that the...

This paper studies the question of how well we understand segregation. The point of departure is Schelling’s spatial proximity model in one dimension. By introducing noise I show that segregation emerges as the long run prediction of neighborhood evolution, both when residents have...

Although reading is a fundamental skill, many students leave school without being proficient readers. We examine a literacy program targeting students most at-risk of reading difficulties in kindergarten and first grade. The program includes multi-sensory learning methods, which focus on...

Although reading is a fundamental skill, many students leave school without being proficient readers. We examine a literacy program targeting students most at-risk of reading difficulties in kindergarten and first grade. The program includes multi-sensory learning methods, which focus on...

In explaining economic phenomena, economic analysis concentrates on selected influences and fixes the host of other factors under a ceteris paribus clause. This view, which goes back to Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), is developed in the first part of the book. Aggregation is viewed as a particular...

Life annuities provide a guaranteed income for the remainder of the recipient’s lifetime, and therefore, annuitization presents an important option when choosing an adequate investment strategy for the retirement ages. While there are numerous research articles studying annuities from a...

Even 50 years after Modigliani/Miller’s irrelevance theorem, the basic question of how firms choose their capital structure remains unclear. This survey paper aims at summarizing and discussing corresponding recent developments in empirical capital structure research, which, in our view, are...

In 2003, Swiss Re introduced a mortality-based security designed to hedge excessive mortality changes for its life book of business. The concern was apparently brevity risk, i.e., the risk of premature death. The brevity risk due to a pandemic is similar to the property risk associated with...