Conventional pension systems suffer from a design defect which makes them financially unsustainable, and a source of inefficiency for the economy as a whole. The paper outlines a second-best policy which includes a public pension system made up of two parallel schemes, a Bismarckian one allowing...

Green tax reform is unpopular because, typically, the poor are hurt most by the higher prices of carbon-intensive commodities. If revenues from a carbon tax are recycled, it may be feasible to gain popular support for green tax reform. To investigate this, we estimate an EASI demand system from...

We conduct experimental games with police applicants in Germany to investigate whether intrinsically motivated agents self-select into public service. Our focus is on trustworthiness and the willingness to enforce norms as key dimensions of intrinsic motivation in the police context. We find...

Based on contribution patterns to parties in Germany and elsewhere, we suggest that democracies should use a mixed system where private funding can play a larger role than public funding. In Germany the high level of public funding for parties can be reduced without expecting undesirable effects...

The production index is an important indicator for assessing the cyclical state of the economy. Unfortunately, the monthly time series is contaminated by many noisy components like seasonal variations, calendar and vacation effects. Only part of those nuisance components are explicitly...

Overall, 72 subjects invest their endowment in four risky assets. Each com-bination of assets yields the same expected return and variance of returns. Illusion of expertise prevails when one prefers nevertheless the self-selected portfolio. After being randomly assigned to groups of four...