Who stays,who goes,who returns?

We study the determinants of East–West migration within Germany during the period 1990–2006, using administrative data, the German Microcensus and the German Socio‐Economic Panel. We find that in addition to income prospects and employment status, two well‐known determinants of migration, psychological and social factors play an important role in determining the migration decision. Men and women move from East to West in proportionate numbers, but among individuals who lived in the East in 1989 women are more likely to migrate. The migrant body in the second wave of migration, starting in the late 1990s, is increasingly composed of young, educated people. By focusing on differences between temporary and permanent migrants, we find that older and single individuals are more likely to return East than stay permanently in the West, compared with younger and married individuals. Finally, the life satisfaction of permanent migrants increases significantly after a move, while that of temporary migrants remains essentially flat.     

Who trades quickly?

We examine differences among US equity market participants according to how quickly, on average, they execute their orders. When traders who execute faster buy (sell), market prices tend to rise (decline). Those who trade more quickly take liquidity more, use smaller trade sizes, transact more frequently, and spread their trading across more venues. Although faster traders are net liquidity demanders, they pay a lower cost to trade. Our results indicate that systematic differences exist across market participants according to how fast they transact, and those with a shorter time to execution exhibit traits that are consistent with information-based trading.     

Who never tells a lie?

I experimentally investigate the hypothesis that many people avoid lying even in a situation where doing so would result in a Pareto improvement. Replicating (Erat and Gneezy, Management Science 58, 723–733, 2012), I find that a significant fraction of subjects tell the truth in a sender-receiver game where both subjects earn a higher payoff when the partner makes an incorrect guess regarding the roll of a die. However, a non-incentivized questionnaire indicates that the vast majority of these subjects expected their partner not to follow their message. I conduct two new experiments explicitly designed to test for a ‘pure’ aversion to lying, and find no evidence for the existence of such a motivation. I discuss the implications of the findings for moral behavior and rule following more generally.     

Communication, consensus and order. Who wants to speak first?

Parikh and Krasucki [R. Parikh, P. Krasucki, Communication, consensus and knowledge, J. Econ. Theory 52 (1990) 178-189] show that, in a group of rational agents, communication of the value of a function f leads to a consensus on the value of f, provided some conditions on the communication protocol and the function f hold. In this article, we address the issue of the influence of the protocol on the outcome of the communication process, when agents value information positively. We show that, if it is common knowledge in a group of agents that some of them disagree on two protocols, then the consensus value of f must be the same for both protocols.     

Who makes,who breaks: Which scientists stay in academe?

We examine the survival of young scientists in academe. The propensity to leave follows an inverse u-shape. Publishing increases and patenting decreases the chance of survival. Scientists with strong preferences for business are less likely to stay in academe.     

Who Pays a Price on Carbon?

We use the 2003 Consumer Expenditure Survey and emissions estimates from an input-output model based on the 1997 US economy to estimate the incidence of a price on carbon induced by a cap-and-trade program or carbon tax in the context of the US. We present results on how much different income deciles pay for a carbon tax as well as which industries see the largest increase in costs due to a carbon tax. We illustrate the main determinant of the regressivity: consumption patterns for energy-intensive goods. Furthermore, on a per-capita basis a carbon price is much more regressive than calculations at the household level. We discuss policy options to offset the adverse distributional effects of a carbon emissions policy.