The paper develops an endogenous growth model which is based on lexicographical consumer preferences. The central variable determining the long-run rate of growth is personal income distribution. Its role in the process of growth depends crucially on the assumption about productivity growth. If productivity grows proportionally to product diversity, then an unequal distribution of incomes, measured by the rate of proportion of top to average incomes, has a positive effect on growth. However, under alternative assumptions, for instance, if productivity is a function of average income, inequality turns out to be harmful for economic growth.
This paper is concerned with the analysis of zero-inflated count data when time of exposure varies. It proposes a modified zero-inflated count data model where the probability of an extra zero is derived from an underlying duration model with Weibull hazard rate. The new model is compared to the standard Poisson model with logit zero-inflation in an application to the effect of treatment with thiotepa on the number of new bladder tumors.
We study how the willingness to enter long-term bilateral relationships affects cooperation even when parties have little information about each other, ex ante, and cooperation is otherwise unenforceable. We experimentally investigate a finitely-repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma, allowing players to endogenously select interaction durations. Consistent with prior research, longer interactions facilitate cooperation. However, many individuals avoid long-term commitment, with uncooperative types less likely to commit than conditional cooperators. Endogenously chosen long-term commitment yields higher cooperation rates (98% in one condition) than exogenously imposed commitment. Thus, the willingness to enter into long-term relationships provides a means for fostering - and screening for - efficient cooperation.
We analyze the effects of the unprecedented rise in trade between Germany and "the East" – China and Eastern Europe – in the period 1988 – 2008 on German local labor markets. Using detailed administrative data, we exploit the cross-regional variation in initial industry structures and use trade flows of other high-income countries as instruments for regional import and export exposure. We find that the rise of "the East" in the world economy caused substantial job losses in German regions specialized in import-competing industries, both in manufacturing and beyond. Regions specialized in export-oriented industries, however, experienced even stronger employment gains and lower unemployment. In the aggregate, we estimate that this trade integration has caused some 493,000 additional jobs in the economy and contributed to retaining the manufacturing sector in Germany. We also conduct our analysis at the individual worker level, and find that trade had a stabilizing overall effect on employment relationships.
We consider general social choice environments with private values and correlated types. Each agent's matrix of conditional probabilities satisfies the full rank condition. We show that for any Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism there exists a dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanism that delivers the same interim expected utilities to all agents and generates at least the same social surplus. In addition, if there is a social alternative that is inferior to the other alternatives for all agents the dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanism matches exactly the social surplus. These results extend to environments with interdependent values satisfying the single crossing condition.
