There is compelling evidence that typical decision-makers, including individual investors and even professional money managers, care about the difference between their portfolio returns and a reference point, or benchmark return. In the context of financial markets, likely benchmarks against...

Although it is common in economics to compare institutions on the basis of single dimensional measures of concepts such as efficiency, fairness or freedom, Allan Schmid's Conflict and Cooperation: Institutional and Behavioral Economics rejects that approach with a sharply contrasting vision of...

This paper argues that political-economic trends referred to under the single heading of globalisation have distinct causes and manifestations in different countries. Institutional variables chosen by governments and their constituents play a dominant role in determining the character of those...

Standard graduate textbooks in microeconomics frequently frustrate students and instructors because they typically devote little attention to institutions, contain few empirical facts about real-world economies, and address normative questions almost exclusively from the standpoint of the...