We consider a three-location duopoly model such that (i) firms choose production and innovation locations before (Bertrand) competition takes place and (ii) there are internal and external knowledge spillovers. We show: (1) agglomerations where firms earn negative profits may exist when there are both external and internal knowledge spillovers; (2) greater external spillovers do not necessarily favor agglomeration; (3) decreasing communication costs tend to favor agglomeration; (4) there are exactly two types of agglomeration equilibria: either both firms innovate in the agglomeration, or there is an innovator and an imitator; and (5) if there is a location where both firms produce, then innovation must take place in this location.
Si stanno sempre più diffondendo forme di regolamentazione che promuovono alternative di managed care nell’ambito delle assicurazioni sanitarie. In questo lavoro viene riportato un esperimento che mira a determinare l’ammontare della compensazione richiesta dalla popolazione svizzera
(in termini di riduzione del premio) quale indennizzo per l’introduzione di restrizioni di tipo managed care nell’offerta di assistenza sanitaria. L’esperimento evidenzia come restrizioni concernenti la scelta
del medico richiederebbero un indennizzo medio superiore a un terzo del premio, mentre la sostituzione di farmaci di marca con generici richiederebbe un indennizzo piuttosto contenuto. La marcata eterogeneità delle preferenze costituisce un argomento a sfavore di una regolamentazione che punti a imporre contratti assicurativi uniformi nell’ambito del sistema sanitario svizzero di assicurazione sociale.
Increasing financial disparity and spiralling wages in European football have triggered a debate about the introduction of salary caps. This paper provides a theoretical model of a team sports leagues and studies the welfare effect of salary caps. It shows that salary caps will increase competitive balance and decrease overall salary payments within the league. The resulting effect on social welfare is counter-intuitive and depends on the preference of fans for aggregate talent and for competitive balance. A salary cap that binds only for large market clubs will increase social welfare if fans prefer aggregate talent despite the fact that the salary cap will result in lower aggregate talent. If fans prefer competitive balance, on the other hand, any binding salary cap will reduce social welfare.
We study whether the effects on registered manufacturing output of dismantling the License Raj – a system of central controls regulating entry and productionnactivity in this sector – vary across Indian states with different labor market regulations. The effects are found to be unequal across Indian states with differentnlabor market regulations. In particular, following delicensing, industries locatednin states with proemployer labor market institutions grew more quickly than thosenin proworker environments.
Applied researchers often test for the difference of the Sharpe ratios of two investmentnstrategies. A very popular tool to this end is the test of Jobson and Korkie (1981), whichnhas been corrected by Memmel (2003). Unfortunately, this test is not valid when returnsnhave tails heavier than the normal distribution or are of time series nature. Instead, wenpropose the use of robust inference methods. In particular, we suggest to construct a studentized time series bootstrap confidence interval for the difference of the Sharpe ratios and to declare the two ratios different if zero is not contained in the obtained interval. This approach has the advantage that one can simply resample from the observed data as opposed to some null-restricted data. A simulation study demonstrates the improved finite sample performance compared to existing methods. In addition, two applications to real data are provided.
A new approach for modeling under-reported Poisson counts is developed. The parameters of the model are estimated by Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation. An application to workers absenteeism data from the German Socio-Economic Panel illustrates the fruitfulness of the approach. Worker absenteeism and the level of pay are unrelated, but absence rates increase with firm size.
Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984-90, the author analyzes the entrance of young individuals into the German labor market, comparing the experience of apprenticeship graduates to that of graduates from universities, full-time vocational schools, and secondary schools. Apprentices experienced fewer unemployment spells in the transition to their first full-time employment than did non-apprentices. Among apprentices, those trained in large firms had the smoothest transition to employment; once employed, however, apprentices (whether they stayed in their training firm or not) and non-apprentices had similar job stability (as measured by tenure). An estimated 70% of apprenticeship trainees left their training firm within a five-year period. These findings are consistent with the view that apprenticeship training develops general, portable skills rather than firm-specific skills
The recent economic literature on the incidence of various forms of post-secondary on-the-job and off-the-job training in Germany and the United States, as well as on the effects of training on wages, inequality, and labor mobility is surveyed. Young workers in Germany receive substantially more company-based (apprenticeship) training than United States workers. In the United States, high turnover deters firms from investing in general skills while it results in improved job matches. The received literature consents that key institutional elements required to make the German apprenticeship system work are absent in the United States.
This paper tests for the importance of non-pecuniary costs of unemployment using a longitudinal data-set on life-satisfaction of working-age men in Germany. We show that unemployment has a large detrimental effect on satisfaction after individual specific fixed effects are controlled for. The non-pecuniary effect is much larger than the effect that stems from the associated loss of income.
