Die demografische Alterung wird in der langen Frist erhebliche Anpassungen in der Finanzierung der Altersvorsorge erfordern. Die Art und Weise, wie die Finanzierungslücke geschlossen wird, hat beträchtliche Auswirkungen auf den Arbeitsmarkt. Für die zukünftige Entwicklung des Pro-Kopf-Einkommens ist es entscheidend, dass die Finanzpolitik in einer Weise reagiert, welche die Anreize für Erwerbsbeteiligung und Leistungsbereitschaft an allen Fronten stärkt.
Venture capitalists, representing informed capital, screen, monitor and advise start-up entrepreneurs. The paper reports three new results on venture capital (VC) finance and the evolution of the VC industry. First, there is an optimal VC portfolio size with a trade-off between the number of companies and the value of managerial advice. Second, advice tends to be diluted when the industry expands and VC skills remain scarce in the short-run. The delayed entry of experienced VCs eventually restores the quality of advice and leads to more focused company portfolios. Third, as a welfare result, VCs tend to provide too little advisory effort and to invest in too few companies. Testable implications are also discussed.
Venture capitalists (VCs) not only finance but also add value to start-up companies. Advising firms is time consuming and creates a trade-off between intensity of advice and portfolio size. We jointly determine the optimal number of portfolio companies and the intensity of managerial advice. Diminishing returns to advice per firm call for a larger portfolio. With progressively increasing managerial effort cost, however, a larger number crowds out advice to each individual firm. As they receive less support, entrepreneurs request a larger profit share, making further portfolio expansion eventually unprofitable. Comparative static analysis shows how optimal portfolio size responds to venture returns and other parameters.
This paper studies the endogenous emergence of political regimes, in particular democracy, oligarchy and mass dictatorship, in societies in which productive resources are distributed unequally and institutions do not ensure political commitments. The political regime is shown to depend on resource inequality as well as on economic development, reflected in the production structure. The main results imply that for any level of development there exists a distribution of resources such that democracy is the political outcome. This distribution is even independent of the particular development level if the income share generated by the poor is sufficiently large. On the other hand, there are distributions of resources for which democracy is infeasible in equilibrium irrespective of the level of development. The model also delivers results on the stability of democracy. Variations in inequality across several dimensions due to unbalanced technological change, immigration or changes in the demographic structure affect the scope for democracy or may even lead to its breakdown. The results are consistent with the different political regimes that emerged in Germany after its unification in 1871.
There is an increasing convergence between postal products and telecom applications which suggests the need for a co-evolution of regulation. But there is hardly any discussion in academia or in practice about the consequences for regulation. Relevant questions are: Which parts of current regulation will become redundant? Is there additional regulation needed due to new bottlenecks or changes in consumer behavior? In our qualitative analysis, we investigate the implications of intermodal competition and growing convergence between postal and telecommunications services on regulatory institutions and regimes. We set up a comparison between the networks and compare the scope of universal services and issues concerning market power regulation in the two different industries
The financing of universal service provision in the postal sector has traditionally relied on granting the universal service provider a reserved area. Together with growing electronic substitution, current liberalization policies promoting competitive entry may put the traditional universal service at risk. Hence, there is an increased interest in knowing the cost of universal service provision. The third EC postal directive proposes a calculation approach to separately determine the net cost of a universal service obligation and to compensate the universal service provider (USP). This paper discusses the interaction between universal service costing and financing and shows that the EC approach may result in distorted results. It also quantifies the effects based on a model calibration with Swiss data. The results show that separate costing and financing leads to a considerable under-compensation of the USP if there is a compensation fund to which every operator contributes. The USP is over-compensated if it is exempt from contributing to the fund (pay or play mechanism). The problem of under- or overcompensation can be resolved by an integrated computation of the net cost that includes the competitive effects of the financing mechanism. Such an integrated approach results in a fair compensation of the USP.
