This paper reports on an experiment of corruption that was conducted in two treatments: one with the possibility of detection and one without. It turns out that monitoring reduces corruption through deterrence; at the same time, it destroys the intrinsic motivation for honesty. Thus the net effect...

This paper is an attempt to provide evidence on two questions: Why do companies sponsor art events, and where exactly does the money go? We analyse data collected on the revenue structure of cultural institutions in Berlin and Hamburg. This data set not only tells us where the money goes, it...

We study the location of various film-related services (such as camera rental, casting agencies or pyrotechnic services), the main determinant of interest being the human capital specificity. We show that firms which supply services with a lower firm specificity locate farther away from one...

Becker and Murphy (1988) constructed, in a well-known paper, a model of rational addiction in which people solve a dynamic optimization problem, choose an optimal timepath of drug consumption and thereby maximize lifetime utility. The model leads to the hypothesis that future consumption is a...

While previous research found no other variable than corruption to have a negative impact on (the growth rate of) the African countries' elephant populations, we show that one further significant impact is exerted by what one might all neighbourhood effects. Elephants travel long distances,...

We examine the willingness to donate depending on whether “misery” is random generated or self-inflicted by too high demands in bilateral negotiations. We find that randomness has a positive influence on the total amount of donation. In case of self-inflicted “misery” we observe that...

The notion of face-to-face contacts has recently become very popular in regional economics and in economic geography. This is the most obvious way to explain why firms still locate in proximity to others after the death of distance, i.e., the shrinking costs for transportation, especially...

This paper presents evidence on biased voting by jurors from the Warsaw Pact countries who ranked high-level chess games. The roots of this bias are probably ideological, as there were no formal benefits for biased voting. Furthermore, this bias is observed only for jurors from Eastern...

It is a persistent phenomenon in many societies that a large proportion of alcohol consumption takes place in company of other people. While the phenomenon of social or public drinking is well discussed in disciplines as social psychology and anthropology, economists have paid little attention...