This thesis provides a comparative perspective on current macro-financial phenomena. Understanding the causes and consequences of rare macroeconomic events and secular trends is inherently difficult. Competing theories and ...

This dissertation consists of three self-contained essays that investigate the interconnectedness of labor markets and household finance. The first two chapters focus on differences in workers' labor market experience and ...

Times of severe economic crisis are, fortunately, rare events. Large recessions, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s or the Great Recession during the late 2000s, have detrimental effects on all economic sectors. ...

This thesis has two aims, first, to contribute to the scientific understanding of human behavior and decisions, namely, social preferences (here: reciprocity), belief formation, and goal setting and feedback. Second, to ...

This thesis analyzes key determinants of financial intermediation and financial stability in three self-contained parts.
The first part explores banks' lending behavior by analyzing the social ties within a ...

The benchmark model of economics, expected utility theory, assumes that individuals manage uncertainty by forming beliefs about all relevant events and that these beliefs satisfy the probability axioms. There is ample scope ...

This dissertation is composed of four chapters with two overarching themes. In the first two chapters, we analyze common-value auctions in which bidders are either uninformed about the number of their competitors or their ...

This thesis consists of three self-contained essays in econometrics and statistics. It discusses methodological topics in semiparametric statistics as well as dynamic panel data models. In chapters 1 and 2 the smooth minimum ...

The Political Economy of Currency Unions:
How can a currency union be sustained when member states have an exit option? This paper derives how fiscal and monetary policies can ensure the survival of a common currency, ...

This thesis consists of five chapters that contribute to understanding the consequences, measurement, and origins of heterogeneity in preferences. Underneath this overarching topic, several different threads are weaving ......