Publications des institutions partenaires
Learning for employment, innovating for growth
We present a model in which workers must be educated to get a good job and firms must innovate in order to increase productivity. Education as well as innovation and production require skilled labor as inputs. This, together with the fact that learning opportunities differ across workers, determine simultaneously the long-run level of skilled employment and the long-run rate of...
Institution partenaire
English / 01/01/2000
A simple mechanism for the efficient provision of public goods: experimental evidence
The author reports on a series of experiments designed to investigate the factor of incentive mechanisms in the case of private provisions of public goods. In the Control treatment, there was no mechanism so that subjects faced strong free-riding incentives. In the so-called Falkinger mechanism treatment, the author implemented the Falkinger mechanism. The studies explored the impact...
Institution partenaire
English / 01/01/2000
Education, Educational Policy and Growth
This paper reviews the recent theoretical and empirical literature that relates education to growth, and draws some lessons for the Swedish experience. First, the “human capital accumulation” approach is discussed: agents decide, at each moment of their lives, to forego time or resources to improve their future productivity. The quality of the educational system is argued to be a...
Institution partenaire
English / 01/01/2000
Chess-like games are dominance solvable in at most two steps
We show that strictly competitive, finite games of perfect information that may end in one of three possible ways can be solved by applying only two rounds of elimination of dominated strategies.
Institution partenaire
English / 01/01/2000
“Yes men”, integrity, and the optimal design of incentive contracts
In a pioneering approach towards the explanation of the phenomenon of “yes man” behavior in organizations, Prendergast [American Economic Review 83 (1993) 757–770] argued that incentive contracts in employment relationships generally make a worker distort his privately acquired information. This would imply that there is a trade-off between inducing a worker to exert costly effort...
Institution partenaire
English / 01/01/2000
Inequality, Redistribution, and Economic Growth
This paper provides a critical review of the recent literature on inequality and growth. After discussing historical and more recent distributional trends as well as empirical evidence on the relationship between inequality and growth, I focus on recent explanations of the inequality-growth puzzle. I consider both the impact of the functional and the personal distribution on long-run...
Institution partenaire
English / 01/01/2000
Is there a Golden Rule for the Stochastic Solow Growth Model?
This paper analyzes the dependence of average consumption on the saving rate in a one-sector neoclassical Solow growth model with production shocks and stochastic rates of population growth and depreciation where arbitrary ergodic processes are considered. The long-run behavior of the stochastic capital intensity and hence average consumption is uniquely determined by a random fixed...
Institution partenaire
English / 01/01/2000
Managerial Power and Compensation
According to the widely used Managerial Power Model, a higher hierarchical position with associated higher power leads to higher compensation. In contrast, the Compensating Wage Differentials Model argues that there is a non-positive relationship between positional power and total compensation. Both power and income yield utility and in equilibrium managers are prepared to trade-off...
Institution partenaire
English / 01/12/1999
Ecological Tax Reform with Exemptions for the Export Sector in a two Sector two Factor Model
This present paper analyzes an energy tax reform that exempts the energy-intensive export sector from paying the energy tax and uses the additional revenue to cut existing taxes in all sectors. To that end, a two sector two factor model of an open economy that is small on the import side but not on the export side is applied. Within this model, an equivalence between a tax reform...
Institution partenaire
English / 01/12/1999
Business Cycle Phenomena in Overlapping Generations Economies with Stochastic Production
This paper analyzes economic fluctuations in an overlapping generations economy with productive capital in which random shocks in aggregate productivity are present. Under specific assumptions we obtain an explicit solution of the model. Applying random dynamical systems theory, we can prove that the long-run behavior of the economy is uniquely described by an asymptotically stable...
Institution partenaire
English / 01/12/1999
Outcome, Process & Power in Direct Democracy
Based on survey data for Switzerland, new empirical findings on direct democracy are presented. In the first part, we show that, on average, public employees receive lower financial compensation under more direct democratic institutions. However, top bureaucrats are more constrained in direct democracies and have to be compensated by higher wages for that loss of power. In the second...
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/1999
Motivation, Knowledge Transfer, and Organizational Forms
"Employees are motivated intrinsically as well as extrinsically. Intrinsic motivation is crucial when tacit knowledge in and between teams must be transferred. Organizational forms enable different kinds of motivation and have different capacities to generate and transfer tacit knowledge. Since knowledge generation and transfer are essential for a firm’s sustainable...
Institution partenaire
English / 01/11/1999
External spillovers, internal spillovers and the geography of production and innovation
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...
Institution partenaire
English / 08/10/1999
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
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