We distinguish between ideational and interest-based appeals to voters on the supply side of politics, and integrate the Keynes-Hayek perspective on the importance of ideas with the Stigler-Becker approach emphasizing vested interests. In our model, political entrepreneurs discover identity and...

Diese Studie analysiert die aktuellen Entwicklungen von Verschwörungsmythen während der Corona-Pandemie. Die wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Bedrohung liegt in einer weitergehenden Spaltung der Gesellschaft mit negativen Folgen auch für den Wirtschaftsstandort Deutschland. Wie sollte...

The hypothesized effects of educational attainment on adult civic engagement and attitudes provide some of the most important justifications for government intervention in the market for education. In this study, I present evidence on whether these externalities exist. I assess and implement two...

Education reforms at risk unless government allows for-profit free schoolsExecutive Summary:The criticism of the ‘profit motive’ in education is unjustified: we should not be concerned about the corporate structure of organisations that provide educational services. Furthermore, while people...

In democratic societies individual attitudes of voters represent the foundations of policy making. We start by analyzing patterns in public opinion on migration and find that, across countries of different income levels, only a small minority of voters favour more open migration policies. Next...

Survey data from the United States, West Germany and East Germany are analyzed to compare individual attitudes towards political redistribution in each country. In West Germany the homo oeconomicus effect, the social rivalry effect and the public values effect simultaneously retain an...

A key idea in political economy is that policy is often tailored to voters who are not ideologically attached - swing voters. We show, however, that in political environments where political parties can use repression and violence to exclude voters from elections, they may optimally target the...

"Hydrocarbon Citizens tells the story of how the discovery of oil has transformed politics and societies in the Middle East. It argues that the creation of oil-dependent economies gave birth to a new type of citizen in the region: the "hydrocarbon citizen." These citizens hold attitudes, values,...

This paper investigates whether the COVID-19 crisis has affected the way we think about (political) institutions, as well as our broader (policy) attitudes and values. We fielded large online survey experiments in Italy, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands, well into the first wave of the...

Motivated by the public debate regarding corporate responsibility, we construct a memory-based model of decision-making to illustrate how corporate and political communication can impact policy preferences. We test the predictions of our model in a new large-scale survey of U.S. citizens on...

"For the better part of a century, the Left has been waging a slow, methodical battle for control of the institutions of Western Civilization. During most of that time, "business" - and American Big Business, in particular - remained the last redoubt for those who believed in free people, free...

Using large-scale survey data covering more than 110 countries and exploiting within-country variation across cohorts and surveys, we show that individuals with longer exposure to democracy display stronger support for democratic institutions. We bolster these baseline findings using an...

We distinguish between ideational and interest-based appeals to voters on the supply side of politics, and integrate the Keynes-Hayek perspective on the importance of ideas with the Stigler-Becker approach emphasizing vested interests. In our model, political entrepreneurs discover identity and...

This paper assesses the role of ideas in economic change, combining economic and historical analysis with insights from psychology, sociology and anthropology. Belief systems shape the system of categories ( "pre-confirmatory bias" ) and perceptions (confirmatory bias), and are themselves...

The vast majority of case studies in the management literature looks at the failings of leadership and at what is wrong with various elements of organizational design and practice. This article takes a different perspective, the perspective that there is great value in studying and learning from...

"Roman Frugality offers the first-ever systematic analysis of the variants of individual and collective self-restraint that shaped ancient Rome throughout its history and had significant repercussions in post-classical times. In particular, it tries to do the complexity of a phenomenon justice...

The elusive consensus of a society in crisis / Dimitris Katsikas -- 'It's not the austerity, stupid'. Interpreting the frames of the far-right wing radicalization / Vasiliki Georgiadou and Anastasia Kafe -- Greek elites' attitudes about the crisis / Dimitris Katsikas -- Framing the sacred :...

„No blood in my cell phone“ – mit eindrücklichen Slogans veranschaulichten NGOs Anfang der 2000er-Jahre Zusammenhänge zwischen Konsumprodukten und der Finanzierung von Kriegen. Das gestiegene öffentliche Bewusstsein mündete in der Verabschiedung verschiedener Regulierungen zum Thema...

In cross-sectional studies, countries with greater income inequality typically exhibit less support for government-led redistribution and greater acceptance of wage inequality (e.g., United States versus Western Europe). If individual nations evolve along this pattern, a vicious cycle could form...

Every policy relies on explicit or implicit assumptions about how people make choices. Those assumptions typically rest on an idealized model of how people think, rather than an understanding of how everyday thinking actually works. This year’s World Development Report argues that a more...

We use individual and aggregate data to ask how the Internet is changing the ideological segregation of the American electorate. Focusing on online news consumption, offline news consumption, and face-to-face social interactions, we define ideological segregation in each domain using standard...

Development economics and policy are due for a redesign. In the past few decades, research from across the natural and social sciences has provided stunning insight into the way people think and make decisions. Whereas the first generation of development policy was based on the assumption that...

We use individual and aggregate data to ask how the Internet is changing the ideological segregation of the American electorate. Focusing on online news consumption, offline news consumption, and face-to-face social interactions, we define ideological segregation in each domain using standard...

Fachübergreifende Darstellung der Entwicklung nachhaltiger Wirtschafts- und Gesellschaftsstrukturen in einem globalen Weltökosystem. Umfassend, mit aussagekräftigen Grafiken und Seitenmarginalien übersichtlich gestaltet, bemüht sich der Titel auch um eine allgemein verständliche Sprache....

The UK government - in common with the governments of many Western countries - is in the midst of implementing policies to reform education. However, the government has, as a matter of principle, decided that profit-making schools cannot provide state-funded education even if they would lead to...