The defense of unlimited economic growth as the main objective to be achieved has been questioned for decades and with even more intensity in recent years. In this context, the Sharing Economy’s initiatives have dramatically increased. This study expands our current understanding of driving...

Adam Smith hypothesized that impersonal exchange was necessary for a society to develop specialized division of labor and create wealth. Douglass North and Vernon Smith argue that successful developed economies are the result of institutions. We hypothesize and provide evidence from ethnographic...

Corporations and policy makers are bombarded with international surveys purporting to show that most consumers want ethical products. Yet when companies offer such products they are often met with indifference and limited uptake. It seems that survey radicals turn into economic conservatives at...

This paper discusses the impacts of providing energy efficiency information to online shoppers. It lays out mechanisms by which this may improve appliance purchase and use decisions, raise awareness, improve innovation and align market forces with sustainability objectives. It finds that...

Our society can benefit immensely from algorithmic decision-making and similar types of artificial intelligence. But algorithmic decision-making can also have discriminatory effects. This paper examines that problem, using online price differentiation as an example of algorithmic...

This chapter explains the logic of structural econometric models and compares them to other types of econometric models. We provide a framework researchers can use to develop and evaluate structural econometric models. This framework pays particular attention to describing different sources of...

This paper analyzes the determinants of higher-cost 'subprime' mortgage credit in the U.S. The analysis is based on a tract-level data set consisting of mortgage data from the 2005 and 2006 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act databases and economic/demographic data from the 2000 Census. The empirical...

Temporary price promotions, or sales, are common in many markets. Using retail scanner data, I find that manufacturers, not retailers, control the timing of sales, while retailers exercise some control over the magnitude of the price decrease. I also find that observed sale policy is more...

After a period of neoliberal blind faith in the power of economic self-interest and of austerity to tackle its catastrophic effects, we are re-discovering our more pleasant sides. There is currently a surge of interest in sharing – in research in various developmental sciences, in popular...

This paper describes the Workplace-Equilibrium Project, which provides a home for economists interested in the formal analysis of labor pricing and use in specialized firms and economies. The Project emphasizes the unique nature of labor input, especially in the context of agency problems, and...