A key issue for many countries and even for international organizations including "The World Bank" and "The United Nations" is how to attack poverty. In many countries of the world, millions of people are hungry, lacking shelter and clothing, sick and uncared for, illiterate and not schooled. These, all cause to reduce efficiency and productivity of labor, and hence decrease income. Also, being...

In this paper we present some provisional results of a research project which aims to show how Basic Income is economically feasible in Catalonia and how it would have a strong redistributive impact on income distribution. We use a micro-simulation program specifically designed for this aim in order to evaluate different policy options of tax-benefit integration which involve a Basic Income, an...

This study explores the determinants (demographic, personal, behavioural, and social) by which happy and unhappy people differ. The primary sample from which the participants were chosen was a representative sample of Croatian citizens (N = 4000). On the basis of the distribution of overall happiness the sample of the highest (the happy group) and the lowest 10 % of participants (the unhappy gr...

This paper introduces ‘harassment’ in a simple model of bribery and corruption. With fixed costs of ‘harassment’, people belonging to the higher income group enjoy more benefit relative to the poorer section of the society. An equilibrium is likely where the poor favor a system without ‘harassment’ but the affluent ones do not.

Two alternative interpretations of the demand for insurance can be derived from the basic insurance model: (1) insurance is a preference for certain losses over uncertain ones of the same expected magnitude, or (2) insurance is a demand for an income transfer if the bad state of the world occurs. Although the former represents convention, many empirical studies show that people actually prefer ...

Student loans, even income-contingent ones, are not optimal. Potential university students with the appropriate characteristics should be offered a scholarship, dependent on both need and merit. The award of the scholarship should be conditional on the choice of university degree, but students with a natural aptitude for studies that do not hold the prospect of a well paid job should not be pus...

When witnessing the administration of pain to an individual who behaved unfairly in an economic game, males show significantly less empathy-related neural activity than females and significantly more activity in areas associated with the processing of reward. This finding suggests that fairness concerns make males more likely to assume the role of punishing unfair behaviour and promoting cooper...

We study the impact of private ownership, incentive pay and local development objectives on university licensing performance. We develop and test a simple contracting model of technology licensing offices, using new survey information together with panel data on U.S. universities for 1995-99. We find that private universities are much more likely to adopt incentive pay than public ones, but own...

We study the impact of incentive pay, local development objectives and government constraints on university licensing performance. We develop and test a simple contracting model of technology licensing offices, using new survey information together with panel data on U.S. universities for 1995-99. We find that private universities are much more likely to adopt incentive pay than public ones, bu...