We argue that societies with a stronger tendency towards postmaterialist life goals tilt the tax structure towards personal income taxes and away from corporate taxation. We provide empirical evidence for this correlation in OECD countries. To address endogeneity issues we then use an...

Concert etiquette demands that audiences of classical concerts avoid inept noises such as coughs. Yet, coughing in concerts occurs more frequently than elsewhere, implying a widespread and intentional breach of concert etiquette. Using the toolbox of (behavioral) economics, we study the social...

Using data from 1960 to 2000 for OECD countries, we analyze the effect of compulsory military service on the demand for higher education, measured by the fraction of the working-age population enrolled in tertiary education. Based on a theoretical model, we hypothesize that a military draft has...

We investigate optimal taxation of lifetime income with and without an emigration option during old age. The government sets the rates of deferred taxation and of possibly reduced taxation of interest. If agents are immobile, the optimal policy consists in full deferral of income taxes on...

Several measures of vulnerability to poverty have been suggested in the literature. In practise, only little is known about the robustness of vulnerability comparisons based on these often quite specific measures. The theory of stochastic orders can be applied to shed some light on such issues....

Though in decline recently, military conscription is still a widely used mode of staffing armies. Since not many valid economic, social or military arguments in favor of the draft can be put forward, the question emerges why societies choose to rely on it. In this survey we explain the political...

We call an agent skewness affine if and only if his marginal willingness to accept a risk increases when the distribution of the risk becomes more skewed to the right. Skewness affinity is shown to be equivalent to the marginal rate of substitution between mean and variance of wealth being...

Using data from 1960-2000 for OECD countries, we analyze the impact of compulsory military service on the demand for higher education, measured by students enrolled in tertiary education as a share of the working-age population. Based on a theoretical model, we hypothesize that military draft...

Though in decline recently, military conscription is still a widely used mode of staffing armies. Since not many valid economic, social or military arguments in favor of the draft can be put forward, the question emerges why societies choose to rely on it. In this survey we explain the political...