plausibel

Tomorrow I will join my boss and we will travel to Austria's very own military academy. We are going to conduct an economic experiment on the soldiers' behavior when contributing to a public good and/or when they have the possibility to punish people who don't contribute (always inside/outside their "battlegroup" (also: "class")).

Any suggestions about that punishment-thing? Am I finally going to meet "the punisher"?

"Some punishment, anybody?" (Nice makeup, by the way)

flo.

Matthias Sutter and Martin Kocher in their article Favoritism of agents – The case of referees’ home bias (Journal of Economic Psychology, 2004) find out 2 things about soccer referees in the German Bundesliga:

"first, football referees are much more likely to award (legitimate) penalties

to the home team than to the visiting team, i.e. visiting teams are refused a legitimate penalty significantly more often.

The Fulbright-program is a bilaterally sponsored initiative between the USA and countries around the world to promote "mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the peoples of other countries."

The program sponsors scholarships for study in the US and other countries, respectively.

I applied and was invited to an interview last monday.

Was quite thrilling.

I haven't visited Vienna in the last 7 years. Seven years ago I was there with my highschool-class, I was 17 and our interest in beer was marginally greater than that in the city itself, so my rememberances are at best blurred.

Last weekend I have finally been there, and I was positively surprised.

The first night I saw a wonderful concert in the "Porgy&Bess", which is an impressive jazz-club in the centre of Vienna. The mere viewing of the room and its colors made me drunk.

Vamos bien che!

flo.

So ein Markt ist ja eine tolle Sache. Da stehen sich haufenweise Käufer und Verkäufer gegenüber, jeder mit seiner eigenen Vorstellung über die Modalitäten eines möglichen Verkaufes (Preis, Menge, Qualität, Restriktionen etc) - eigentlich das reinste Chaos. Dann kommt die unsichtbare Hand daher und schiebt Angebot und Nachfrage (zB durch Verhandlungen) so lange hin und her, bis wir einen Gleichgewichtspreis haben und viele (nicht alle) zufrieden sind.

flo.

big brother is watching you.flo.

To get in the right mood, click here

I don't know for sure how it works, but during football worldcups people all around the world fall heavily in love with their country (given that this country participates, ahem). They fall into wild and passionate love, they forget their daily sorrows for a while. They meet with their compatriots and suffer defeats, celebrate victories and claim foul play of the opponents. It's called emotions, and it's a good thing too.

So here we go: In about one hour from now we are about to see the (probably dead-boring) opening game of the football worldcup.

I don't want to engage in the usual "who is going to win and why" discussion, I leave that to you. What I enquired about, was the possible effect of the championship on the economy.