infonet-economy

This paper estimates the effect of trade liberalization on growth, using plant-level data from Switzerland. We employ a natural experiment framework to quantify the effect of a bundle of treaties liberalizing trade between Switzerland and the EU enacted in June 2002 ("Bilateral Agreements I") on the growth of Swiss plants. Using both a semi-parametric difference-in-...

In heterogeneous treatment effect models with endogeneity, the identification of the local average treatment effect (LATE) typically relies on an instrument that satisfies two conditions: (i) joint independence of the potential post-instrument variables and the instrument and (ii) monotonicity of the treatment in the instrument. We show that identification is still feasible when...

We investigate the impact of wage comparisons for worker productivity. We present three studies which all use three-person gift-exchange experiments. Consistent with Akerlof and Yellen's (1990) fair wage-effort hypothesis we find that disadvantageous wage discrimination leads to lower efforts while advantageous wage discrimination does not increase efforts on average. Two...

Am 1. Februar 1953 wurden grosse Teile der Niederlande von einer Sturmflut heimgesucht. Etwa 2000 Menschen starben und die Wirtschaftsleistung grosser Landstriche wurde weitgehend zerstört. Ausgelöst wurde die Flutkatastrophe durch unglückliche klimatische Umstände und den schlechten Zustand vieler Deiche im Mündungsgebiet der drei Flüsse Rhein, Maas und Schelde.

We estimate the effects of active labour market policies (ALMP) on subsequent employment by nonparametric instrumental variables and matching estimators. Very informative administrative Swiss data with detailed regional information are combined with exogenous regional variation in programme participation probabilities, which generate an instrument within well-defined local labour...

Does the cultural background influence the success with which genetically unrelated individuals cooperate in social dilemma situations? In this paper, we provide an answer by analysing the data of Herrmann et al. (2008a), who studied cooperation and punishment in 16 subject pools from six different world cultures (as classified by Inglehart & Baker (2000)). We use analysis of...

In many countries, caseworkers in a public employment office have the dual roles of counselling and monitoring unemployed persons. These roles often conflict with each other leading to important caseworker heterogeneity: Some consider providing services to their clients and satisfying their demands as their primary task. Others may however pursue their strategies even against the...

We investigate the effects of the most important East German active labour market programmes on the labour market outcomes of their participants. The analysis is based on a large and informative individual database coming from administrative data sources. Using matching methods, we find that over a horizon of 2.5 years after programme start the programmes fail to increase the...

This microeconometric study analyzes the effects of individual leisure sports participation on long-term labour market variables, on socio-demographic as well as on health and subjective well-being indicators for West Germany based on individual data from the German Socio-Economic Panel study (GSOEP) 1984 to 2006. Econometric problems due to individuals choosing their own level of...