Der sogenannte Libertäre Paternalismus, der in den letzten Jahren mit dem Politikinstrument des Nudging hervorgetreten ist, weist in seinen konzeptionellen Grundlagen eine Reihe problematischer Eigenschaften auf. Insbesondere dient der Homo oeconomicus als normatives Rollenmodell, der...

Does competition affect moral behavior? This fundamental question has been debated among leading scholars for centuries, and more recently, it has been tested in experimental studies yielding a body of rather inconclusive empirical evidence. A potential source of ambivalent empirical results on...

For several decades, what has been called the "liberal cosmopolitan-minded urban elites" set the political agenda of Western democracies (Dold and Krieger 2019a). They aimed at personal freedom and upward social mobility by means of a meritocratic system that was safeguarded by a combination of...

In the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis, a battle of ideas emerged over whether ordoliberalism is part of the cause or the solution of economic problems in Europe. While German ordoliberals argued that their policy proposals were largely ignored before, during and after the crisis, critics saw...

In Fairness versus Welfare (2003), Louis Kaplow and Steven Shavell provide a manifesto for normative law and economics. Therein, they spell out the foundations for contemporary law and economics based on a Paretian consequentialist welfarism and a preferentialist account of welfare. We argue in...

Populist movements increasingly challenge liberal Western market democracies. Populism can be explained only in part by phenomena like globalization and digitization producing winners and losers in economic terms. Growing feelings of alienation from the market-democratic system and the perceived...

The objective of this note is to revisit the meaningfulness of the Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT) and apply it to the recent debate on liberal paternalism and consumer protection. The CJT con-sists of two parts, (a) stating that a jury of experts is always more competent than a single expert given...

In light of behavioral findings regarding inconsistent individual decision-making, economists have begun to re-conceptualize the notion of welfare. One prominent account is the preference purification approach (PP), which attempts to reconstruct preferences from revealed choices based on a...

Cyber-Security ist aus ökonomischer Sicht vor allem eine Frage fehlgeleiteter Anreize. Wenn Marktakteure nicht die vollen Kosten ihres informationstechnologischen Handelns tragen, führt dies zu ineffizienten Märkten. Ein Grund für die geringen Investitionen in Cyber-Security dürfte in...