infonet-economy

In an evaluation of a job-training program, the influence of the program on the individual earnings capacity is important, because it reflects the program effect on human capital. Estimating these effects is complicated because earnings are observed for employed individuals only, and employment is itself an outcome of the program. Point identification of these effects can only be...

We investigate the allocation of unemployed individuals to different subprograms within Swiss active labour market policy by the caseworkers at local employment offices in Switzerland in 1998. We are particularly interested in whether the caseworkers allocate the unemployed to services in ways that will maximize the program-induced changes in their employment probabilities. Our...

Child-care subsidies are meant to facilitate work for mothers with small children. The paper demonstrates that the predominant current income-dependent subsidy scheme in Switzerland (which is currently also discussed in Germany) creates strong negative work incentives especially for well qualified women. The example of the city of Zurich shows that it does not pay off for mothers to...

Surveys are often design so that initial non-respondents to some continuous amount can disclose partial information with follow-up questions. These questions are often based on prompting responses with a sequence of bids that classify the undisclosed amount within a category. Secondary variables may reduce the problem of nonresponse but are unlikely to eliminate the problem...

We reconsider the evidence of Lechner, Miquel and Wunsch (2004, 2005) on the effectiveness of training programmes for the unemployed conducted in East and West Germany in the period 1993-1994 by investigating whether, and if so, how overall policy conclusions depend on the particular choice of the outcome variable. We find that different measures of employment and earnings provide...

Aktive Arbeitsmarktpolitik in der Schweiz wird der deutschen gegenübergestellt. Beide Länder haben viele Gemeinsamkeiten bezüglich Zielsetzung, Instrumenten und institutionellen Reformen von aktiver Arbeitsmarktpolitik. In der Schweiz stand jedoch bereits schon früher eine informative administrative Datenbasis zur Evaluation zur Verfügung, so dass arbeitsmarktliche Massnahmen dort...

This paper proposes estimators of unconditional distribution functions in the presence of covariates. The methods are based on the estimation of the conditional distribution by (parametric or nonparametric) quantile regression. The conditional distribution is then integrated over the range of the covariates, allowing for the estimation of counterfactual distributions. In the...

We describe a computerized experiment which can be used to introduce students to imperfect competition in courses on introductory economics, industrial organization, game theory, and strategy & management. In addition to introducing students to strategic thinking in general, the experiment serves to demonstrate that firm profits fall as the number of competitors is increased in a...