Publications des institutions partenaires
2981 - 3000 of 3094
Maximising Happiness?
"The measurement of individual happiness challenges the notion that revealed preferences only reliably reflect individual utility. Reported subjective well-being is a broader concept than traditional decision utility; it also includes concepts like experience and procedural utility. Micro- and macroeconometric happiness functions offer new insights on determinants of life…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/1999
Demokratieindizes für die Kantone der Schweiz
Die direkte Demokratie ist in den Kantonen der Schweiz unterschiedlich stark ausgeprägt. Die Beteiligung der Bürger im politischen Prozess via Verfassungs- und Gesetzesinitiative, Gesetzesreferendum und Finanzreferendum ist durch verschieden hohe Hürden eingeschränkt. Unterschiede bestehen beispielsweise bei der Anzahl Unterschriften, die verlangt werden, um ein Instrument zu…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/1999
Was bewirkt die Volkswirtschaftslehre?
"Due to its formality and highly analytic thinking, economics is often attributed a leading role among the social sciences and a prominent position as contributor to economic or social issues in the real world. Fact is, however, that the empirical proof for such a claim is either missing or anecdotal. This paper aims to outline the ""economics of economics”.…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/1999
Multilaterale Abkommen für Direktinvestitionen - Lernen aus dem MAI?
Die Verhandlungen innerhalb der OECD zu einem multilateralen Abkommen ueber Investitionen (MAI) sind gescheitert. Damit werden Direktinvestitionen gegenwaertig weiterhin durch bilaterale Vertraege und durch einige wenige multilaterale Abkommen geregelt. In Zukunft ist jedoch weiterhin damit zu rechnen, daß diese durch ein allgemeines Rahmenwerk nach Vorlage des MAI ersetzt werden.…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/1999
Innovation and the Emergence of Market Dominance
This paper analyzes a model of oligopolistic competition with ongoing investment. It incorporates the following models as special cases: incremental investment, patent races, learning-by-doing, and network externalities. We investigate circumstances under which a firm with low costs or high quality will extend its initial lead through further cost-reducing or quality-improving…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/10/1999
Ageing of population and health care expenditure: a red herring?
This paper studies the relationship between health care expenditure (HCE) and age, using longitudinal rather than cross-sectional data. The econometric analysis of HCE in the last eight quarters of life of individuals who died during the period 1983-1992 indicates that HCE depends on remaining lifetime but not on calendar age, at least beyond 65+. The positive relationship between…
Institution partenaire
English / 24/09/1999
Fairness, Incentives, and Contractual Choices
This paper examines how the presence of a non-negligible fraction of reciprocally fair actors changes the provision of incentives through contracts. We provide experimental evidence that principals have a strong preference for less complete contracts although the standard self-interest model predicts that they should prefer the more complete contract. Our theoretical analysis shows…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/09/1999
z-Tree - Zurich Toolbox for Readymade Economic Experiments - Experimenter's Manual
"This manual explains the use of z-Tree, the ""Zurich Toolbox for Readymade Economic Experiments"". No programming knowledge is necessary to use z-Tree. This software allows to program and to conduct a wide range of experiments. This includes simultaneous and sequential games as well as market experiments and posted offer markets or double auctions. Because…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/09/1999
On the Nature of Fair Behavior
"This paper shows that identical offers in an ultimatum game generate systematically different rejection rates depending on the other offers that are available to the proposer. This result casts doubt on the consequentialist practice in economics to define the utility of an action solely in terms of the consequences of the action irrespective of the set of alternatives. It means…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/08/1999
Environmental Tax Reform: Efficiency and Political Feasibility
Command-and-control measures, despite their inefficiencies, are still the standard in environmental policy. This might be due to the fact that command-and-control instruments prevent monetary redistribution between sectors and households and leave property rights on remaining pollution with the emittents. The present paper interprets the no-redistribution policy as a political…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/07/1999
Art Fakes - What Fakes? An Economic View
"An economic analysis of fakes differs substantially from the legal and the art historic views which both tend to propose repressive policies against imitations. But there are large economic benefits from copying. In particular, the ""propagation effect"" yields utility to both consumers and creators of the original. In contrast, the harmful effects of fakes…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/07/1999
Happiness, Economy and Institutions
"A cross-regional econometric analysis is conducted suggesting that institutional factors in the form of direct democracy (via initiatives and referenda) and of federal structure (local autonomy) systematically and sizeably raise self-reported individual well-being. This positive effect can be attributed to political outcomes closer to voters preferences as well as to the…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/07/1999
Do Immigrants Displace Young Native Workers: The Austrian Experience
This paper studies the effect of increased immigration in Austria on the unemployment risk of young natives. Austria experienced a dramatic rise in the share of alien workers as a result of the breakdown of the former commu-nist regimes (especially from former Yugoslavia). We concentrate on unemployment entry of young male workers, who are supposed to compete most heavily with new…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/06/1999
Clever agents in Young's evolutionary bargaining model
In the models of Young (1993, Econometrica61, 57–84; 1993, J. Econ. Theory 59, 145–168), boundedly rational individuals are recurrently matched to play a game, and they play myopic best replies to the recent history of play. It could therefore be an advantage to instead play a myopic best reply to the myopic best reply, something boundedly rational players might conceivably also do.…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/06/1999
Does Pay Motivate Volunteers?
Volunteer work is an increasingly large, yet ill-understood sector of the economy. We show that monetary rewards undermine the intrinsic motivation of volunteers. A unique data set from Switzerland allows us to assess the effects of financial rewards on the effort put into volunteer work. There is a fairly standard pattern regarding the volunteers reaction e.g. to more labor market…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/05/1999
Intra-firm Wage Dispersion and Firm Performance
Personnel economics has put forward conflicting arguments concerning the impact of increased wage dispersion within a firm on the productivity of its workers. Besides giving more incentives, bigger wage differentials might also give rise to less co-operation and more politicking amongst workers resulting in worse outcomes. We try to shed light on these issues using panel data for…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/05/1999
Schumpeterian Entrepreneurs Meet Engel's Law: The Impact of Inequality on Innovation-Driven Growth
This paper analyzes the impact of inequality on growth when technical progress is driven by innovations and consumers have hierarchic preferences. Inequality has an impact on growth because it affects the structure and the dynamics of demand. Redistribution from very rich to very poor consumers is beneficial for growth. In general, the growth effect depends on the nature of…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/05/1999
A Theory of Fairness, Competition and Cooperation
There is strong evidence that people exploit their bargaining power in competitive markets but not in bilateral bargaining situations. There is also strong evidence that people exploit free-riding opportunities in voluntary cooperation games. Yet, when they are given the opportunity to punish free-riders, stable cooperation is maintained although punishment is costly for those who…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/04/1999
Social Comparisons, Inequality, and Growth
Over the recent years one could repeatedly hear the claim that a rising concern for relative standing (in terms of consumption) was partly responsible for the decline in household savings and in growth that could be observed in some developed countries (particularly in the US) and that the rise in income inequality had further aggravated this process. In this paper we want to analyze…
Institution partenaire
English / 01/04/1999
Social instability and redistribution of income
Rational agents can express discontent with a given distribution of income by threatening to disrupt an economy, if such a threat is profitable. This paper describes such circumstances in a two-class model. Social stability constraints define the acceptable set of income distributions, the range of which is determined by the extent to which income-generating abilities are vulnerable…
Institution partenaire
English / 24/03/1999
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