The notion of face-to-face contacts has recently become very popular as a reason why firms still locate in proximity to others after the “death of distance.†Controlled laboratory experiments provide direct and reliable evidence on the importance of face-to-face contacts. It is the...

This paper looks back on the first ten years of empirical corruption research, which started with Mauro's seminal paper in 1995. The previous theoretical discussion did not reach unanimous conclusions on whether corruption is harmful or not; the arguments are briefly sketched. International...

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...

In order to profit from China’s enormous business opportunities, international firms need to know Chinese consumer preferences. To learn more about intrinsic Chinese consumer preferences and their distinction from other Asian consumer preferences, this study analyzes differences in the...

Discusses incentives for basic research, which were recently introduced in the German Institute for Economic Research, including both team and individual incentives. Possible problems arise from focussing on the measurable, crowding out intrinsic motivation and undesirable externalities....

Economic page turners like <italic>Freakonomics</italic> are well written and there is much to be learned from them -- not only about economics, but also about writing techniques. Their authors know how to build up suspense, i.e., they make readers want to know what comes. An uncountable number of pages in books...

This paper presents evidence on biased voting by jurors from the Warsaw Pact countries who ranked high-level chess games. This bias is observed only for jurors from Eastern countries, not for those from the West (NATO), and most interestingly, it disappears after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact...

Little is known about international differences in the formation of customer satisfaction, particularly regarding developed and emerging markets in Asia. This lack of knowledge limits the competitiveness of Western companies in Asia. From the perspectives of economic and cultural country...