People often act out of a desire to be responsible for good and not for bad events. Similarly, people frequently reward and punish other people if they perceive them to be responsible for the implementation of events that they like or dislike. When the implementation of an event depends on the...

Multidimensional welfare analysis has recently been revived by money-metric measures based on explicit fairness principles and the respect of individual preferences. To operationalize this approach, preference heterogeneity can be inferred from the observation of individual choices (revealed...

People frequently reward and punish other people if they perceive them to be responsible for the implementation of events that they like or dislike. However, the determinants of such responsibility perceptions are not well understood within economics. In this paper, I propose a notion of causal...

Are we more inclined to take risks for ourselves rather than on someone else's behalf? The current study reviews and summarizes 28 effects from 18 studies (n=4,784). Across all studies, choices for others were significantly more risk-averse than choices for self (d=0.15, p=0.012). Two objective...

We develop a model that combines competitive exchange of private commodities across endogenously formed groups with public good provision and global collective decisions. There is a tension between local and global collective decisions. In particular, we show that group formation and collective...

In this paper, we first model the dynamics of an economy, making use of a simple, almost trivial circular flow analysis. Then, we demonstrate the effects of keeping up with the Jonesesʺ as well as of keeping ahead of the Smithsʺ in private consumption and the role of innovation and imitation...

Behavioral (e.g. consumption) patterns of boundedly rational agents can lead these agents into learning dynamics that appear to be "wasteful" in terms of well-being or welfare. Within settings displaying preference endogeneity, it is however still unclear how to conceptualize well-being. This...

Using a framework that distinguishes short-term consumer preferences, individual reflective preferences and political preferences, we discuss from a constitutional economics perspective whether individuals find it in their common constitutional interest to endow representatives and bureaucrats...