infonet-economy

A joint Wharton School–World Bank conference called attention to the high proportions of medical care spending paid out of pocket in most developing countries. One of the reasons for this, attendees said, is the problem in such economies of generating high tax revenues in a nondistortive way. Since people are paying out of pocket, they should be able to afford some private insurance…

We argue that principles from the design of dependable software, especially separation of concerns and the use of formality, can be applied beneficially in the construction of self-managing systems. We illustrate this approach by presenting an experimental architecture for dynamic and resilient computer-based systems which utilises component metadata to govern reconfigurations in…

Elicitation methods in decision-making under risk allow us to infer the utilities of outcomes as well as the probability weights from the observed preferences of an individual. An optimally efficient elicitation method is proposed, which takes the inevitable distortion of preferences by random errors into account and minimizes the effect of such errors on the inferred utility and…

This paper analyzes the causal relationships between marriage and subjective well-being in a longitudinal data set spanning 17 years. We find evidence that happier singles opt more likely for marriage and that there are large differences in the benefits from marriage between couples. Potential, as well as actual, division of labor seems to contribute to spouses’ well-being,…

This article presents first insights into the role of international outsourcing on the productivity of low-skilled workers in EU manufacturing. Whereas in the short run international outsourcing exhibits a negative marginal effect on real value added per low-skilled worker, the long-run parameter estimates reveal a positive impact. This may be explained by imperfections in European…

Democracy can be characterized by policy outcomes as well as governmental processes. In this article, it is argued that people have preferences about both aspects and that they derive utility from the processes involved in decision making over and above the utility gained from outcomes. The authors study political participation possibilities as an important source of procedural…

The most influential approach of corporate governance, the view of shareholders’ supremacy does not take into consideration that the key task of modern corporations is to generate and transfer firm-specific knowledge. It proposes that, in order to overcome the widespread corporate scandals, the interests of top management and directors should be increasingly aligned to shareholder’…