Wir untersuchen die Struktur der Verwaltungs- und Verfahrenskosten der öffentlichen Unfallkassen in Deutschland. Als Datengrundlage dienen die Zahlen aus den Geschäfts- undnRechnungsergebnissen der Unfallträger der öffentlichen Hand für die Jahre 1998 bis 2005. Die Ergebnisse einer Regressionsanalyse liefern Aufschlüsse über Kostentreibernund Skaleneffekte. Die Verwaltungs- und Verfahrenskosten konnten durchnmeldepflichtige Unfälle in der Allgemeinen und Schülerunfallversicherung sowie die Präventionsintensität der Unfallkassen sehr gut erklärt werden.nDie Arbeit hat drei Hauptergebnisse. Erstens sind die Unfallkassen sehr heterogennbezüglich ihrer Verwaltungs- und Verfahrenskosten. Zweitens haben diese Kostenunterschiede nichts mit der Größe der Unfallkassen zu tun: es kann keinerlei Evidenz für Kostenvorteile größerer Unfallkassen (Skaleneffekte) gefunden werden. Drittens ziehen Schülerunfälle erheblich geringere Kosten in der Verwaltung nach sich als Unfälle in der Allgemeinen Unfallversicherung. Ferner gibt es Hinweise, dass eine höhere Präventionsintensität einer Unfallkasse auch höhere Kosten in der Verwaltung nach sich zieht.
Idiosyncratic consumption risk explains more than 60 percent of the cross-sectional variation in quarterly exchange rate changes and currency returns. Our results are obtained from data of 13 industrialized countries and arenbased on an international version of the consumption capital asset pricing model (CCAPM) in which we account for international consumption heterogeneity. We use this framework to dissect the consumption-exchange rate anomaly, the empirical fact that international variation in purchasing power alone does not appear to account for differences in consumption growth rates across countries. As an explanation for this phenomenon, we explore the presence of currency risk premia that also lead to departures from uncovered interest parity (UIP). We decompose the cross-sectional variation in consumption into one component that is due to cross-country differences in inflation rates and a second component that is due to international variation in nominal interest rates. We interpret these factors as indicators of goods and financial market segmentation respectively. We find that bothnhelp account to virtually equal parts for the cross-section of exchange rate changes. Interestingly, the price of aggregate consumption risk has declined over the 1990s, in line with a growing literature that documents a growingninternationalisation of country portfolios over this period.
A large experimental and empirical literature on asymmetric dominance and attraction effects shows that the probability that an alternative is chosen can increase if additional alternatives become available. Hence context matters and choices and, therefore, market shares can not be accurately described by standard choice models where individuals choose the alternative that yields the highest utility. This paper analyzes a simple procedural choice model. Individuals determine their choice by a sequence of binary comparisons. The model offers an intuitive explanation for violations of regularity such as the attraction and the asymmetric dominance effect and shows their relation to the similarity effect. The model analyzes a new rationale why context matters. The model is applied to explain primacy and recency effects and to derive implications with respect to product design.
Deterrence has been a crucial element in fighting terrorism, both in politics and in rational choice analyses of terrorism. However, there are two strategies that are superior to deterrence. The first one is to make terrorist attacks less devastating and less attractive to terrorists through decentralization. The second one is to raise the opportunity cost – rather than the material cost – for terrorists. These alternative strategies will effectively dissuade potential terrorists. It is here argued that they not only apply to society as a whole but can also usefully be applied by business enterprises.
Teamwork and cooperation between workers can be of substantial value to a firm, yet the level of worker cooperation often varies between individual firms. We show that these differences can be the result of labor market competition if workers have heterogeneous preferences and preferences are private information. In our model there are two types of workers: selfish workers who only respond to monetary incentives, and conditionally cooperative workers who might voluntarily provide team work if their co-workers do the same. We show that there is no pooling in equilibrium, and that workers self-select into firms that differ in their incentives as well as their resulting level of team work. Our model can explain why firms develop different corporate cultures in an ex-ante symmetric environment. Moreover, the results show that, contrary to first intuition, labor market competition does not destroy but may indeed foster within-firm cooperation.
Concerns for relative performance are integrated into a model of contractual renegotiation in bilateral trade. It is shown that concernsnfor relative performance do never impede efficient trade. Moreover, conditional on renegotiation to occur, concerns for relative performance tend to mitigate material rent expropriation. However, concerns for relative performance make the occurrence of renegotiation more likely, and may thereby lead to underinvestment even in very optimistic environments. The analysis suggests an explanation for the occurrence of the Druzhba pipeline conflictnbetween Russia and Belarus in January 2007.
In the course of history a large number of politicians has been assassinated. A rationalnchoice analysis is used to distinguish the expected marginal benefits of killing, and the marginal cost of attacking a politician. The comparative analysis of various equilibria helps us to gain insights into specific historical events.nThe analysis suggests that – in addition to well-known security measures – an extension of democracy, a rule by a committee of several politicians, more decentralization via the division of power and federalism, and a strengthening of civil society significantly reduce politicians’ probability of being attacked and killed.
This paper investigates the effectiveness of two instruments designed to defer termination in the centipede game: an insurance against termination by the opponent, and an option to offer the opponent a bonus for not terminating the game. The rational prediction in both cases is passing until close to the end. Empirically, however, only the bonus option is used by the subjects. The results indicate that subjects readily understand the strategic effect of the bonus, which, once offered, renders passing until close to the end the strictly dominant strategy for both players. Yet, they fail to realise the slightly more involved strategic signal entailed in the insurance, namely that passing until close to the end is a strictly dominant strategy for an insured player. In order to further investigate this effect, we propose a simple behavioural model based on level-k thinking and show that it is largely consistent with the data.
This paper argues that politicians are overprotected. The costs of politicalnassassination differ systematically depending on whether a private or a public point of view is taken. A politician attributes a very high (if not infinite) cost to his or her survival. The social cost of political assassination is much smaller as politicians are replaceable. Conversely, the private cost of the security measures is low fornpoliticians, its bulk – including time loss and inconvenience – is imposed on taxpayers and the general public. The extent of overprotection is larger in dictatorial than in democratic countries.
Economic research offers two traditional ways of analyzing decision making under risk. One option is to compare the goodness of fit of different decision theories using the samenmodel of stochastic choice. An alternative way is to vary models of stochastic choicencombining them with only one or two decision theories. This paper proposes to look at the bigger picture by comparing different combinations of decision theories and modelsnof stochastic choice. We select a menu of seven popular decision theories and embedneach theory in five models of stochastic choice including tremble, Fechner and randomnutility model. We find that the estimated parameters of decision theories differnsignificantly when theories are combined with different models. Depending on the selected model of stochastic choice we obtain different ranking of decision theories with regard to their goodness of fit to the data. The fit of all analyzed decision theories improves significantly when they are embedded in a Fechner model of heteroscedastic truncated errors (or random utility model in a dynamic decision problem).
