We examine lobby influence on policy outcomes in a legislative vote-buying model with two competing lobbyists and endogenous policy proposals. We compare two polar cases: (1) the committee or (2) the lobbyist seeking policy change writes the bill. Surprisingly we find that if the salience of the...

We examine how basic research should be financed. While basic research is a public good benefiting innovating entrepreneurs it also affects the entire economy: occupational choices of potential entrepreneurs, wages of workers, dividends to shareholders, and aggregate output. We show that the...

Welfare aspects of longevity increases are often discussed neglecting the complex relationship between longevity and economic growth, which is the focal point of another literature. Combining both perspectives, we develop an endogenous growth OLG-framework to investigate how longevity affects...

We examine the incentives to self-select into politics. To this end, we set up a two-stage political competition model and test its key mechanisms in the lab. At the entry stage, potential candidates compete in a contest to become their party’s nominee. At the election stage, the nominated...

We develop a perpetual youth model to investigate how longevity affects economic growth and welfare. Life expectancy is determined by individuals' investments in healthcare. We find that improvements in the healthcare technology always increase the steady state growth rate. Although the effect...

The prevailing literature discusses intergenerational trade-offs predominantly in infinitely-lived agent models despite the finite lifetime of individuals. We discuss these trade-offs in a continuous time OLG framework and relate the results to the infinitely-lived agent setting. We identify...

This paper investigates how families make decisions about the education of juveniles. The decision problem is analyzed in three variations: a 'decentralized' scheme, in which the parents control the purse-strings, but the children dispose of their time as they see fit; a 'hierarchical' scheme,...

Even though most countries have agreed to a harmonization of intellectual property rights by signing the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), there is still much dispute about the optimal level of protection of intellectual property rights in the world....

While most countries have harmonized intellectual property rights (IPR) legislation, the dispute about the optimal level of IPR-enforcement remains. This paper develops an endogenous growth framework with two open economies satisfying the classical North-South assumptions to study (a)...

What is the economic rationale for investing in science? Based on an open economy model of creative destruction, we characterize four key factors of optimal investment in basic research: the stage of economic development, the strength of the manufacturing base, the degree of openness, and the...