"At present, new EU-members have to fully accept the ""acquis communautaire"" even if their economic and institutional development differs drastically from the EU-average. In contrast, we propose that there should be the possibility of partial entry into the EU. East European Countries should have the option of specifically entering with respect to functions where they expect positive net benefits. In order to enable such partial entry, a new type of jurisdictions called FOCJ (Functional, Overlapping and Competing Jurisdictions) is proposed between the EU, the CEECs, and beyond. Such FOCJ allow for partial integration based on economic efficiency and democratic rules."
In this paper we show that a simple model of reciprocal preferences explains major experimental regularities of common pool resource (CPR) experiments. The evidence indicates that in standard CPR games without communication and without sanctioning possibilities inefficient excess appropriation is the rule. However, when communication or informal sanctions are available appropriation behavior is more efficient. Our analysis shows that these regularities arise naturally when a fraction of the subjects exhibits reciprocal preferences.
In this paper we pursue an approach based on economic theory to illustrate possible shortcomings of widely-used detrending methods. Wenanalyze a simple model of economic growth and business cycles in which investment and technical progress are stochastic. The Hodrick-Prescottnand the Baxter-King filter are shown to detect spurious business cycles which are not related to actual cycles in the model. Our results cast doubts on the validity of commonly-accepted stylized business cycle facts. We also discuss the relation of business-cycle dating based on indicators of economic activity, as e.g. applied by the NBER, and the detrending results.
"A growing economic literature recognizes and deals with the fact that economic agents' utility and well-being is not solely determined by absolute achievements, but also by achievements relative to a reference standard or reference group. In this literature it is assumed that the reference standard is completely exogenous. Social psychologists have questioned the exogenous nature of the comparison process (""forced comparison conception"") and have emphasized that people play a more active role in the determination of their reference standards (""coping approach""). The present paper takes up this idea. In our model the reference standard is determined endogenously. Following the social comparison literature we assume that in choosing the optimal reference standard people pursue goals of self-improvement and self-enhancement. Our model predicts that the optimally chosen reference standard (or group) increases in people's abilities. We present new questionnaire data together with a review of various important findings from social perception studies (minimum income, happiness, subjective social class). It turns out that the empirical regularities conform well to the predictions of our model, but are difficult (if not impossible) to explain by both the standard economic approach (with its neglect of social comparison) and the forced comparison approach. "
"Most contracts, whether between voters and politicians or between house owners and contractors, are incomplete. ""More law,"" it typically is assumed, increases the likelihood of contract performance by increasing the probability of enforcement and/or the cost of breach. This paper studies a contractual relationship where the first mover has to decide whether she wants to enter a contract without knowing whether the second mover will perform. We analyze how contract enforceability affects individual performance for exogenous preferences. Then we apply a dynamic model of preference adaptation and find that economic incentives have a non-monotonic impact on behavior. Individuals perform a contract when enforcement is strong or weak but not with medium enforcement probabilities: Trustworthiness is ""crowded in"" with weak and ""crowded out"" with medium enforcement. In a laboratory experiment we test our model's implications and find support for the crowding prediction."
This paper recasts Temin's (1976) question of whether monetary forces caused the Great Depression in a modern time series framework. We evaluate the effects of monetary policy against nonmonetary alternatives in a Bayesian updating framework with time-varying parameters. The predictive power of monetary policy for output is very small for the early phase of the depression and breaks down almost entirely after 1931. During the propagation phase of 1930-31, monetary policy is able to forecast correctly at short time horizons put invariably predicts recovery at longer horizons. In contrast, nonmonetary leading indicators on residential construction and equipment investment have impressive predictive power. Recursive calculation of the impulse response functions exhibits remarkable structural instability and strong reactions to monetary regime changes during the depression, just as predicted by the Lucas (1976) critique.
The paper takes a closer look at cultural festivals such as musical or operatic festivals. From an economic viewpoint the paper shows that such festivals offer great artistic and economic opportunities, but that at the same time these opportunities are also easy to destroy. Empirical evidence from the Salzburg Festival show that government support can have negative effects on the innovative and economically success of festivals by introducing distorting incentives and imposing all sorts of restrictions. The paper draws policy suggestions on how the state can support art festivals.
"We normally take it for granted: a government or state has its corresponding territory. This paper shows that government need not have a territorial monopoly. The paper advances a practical, constitutional proposal, based on the notion that there are meaningful government units, whose major characteristic is not the territorial extension but its function. The constitution proposal allows for the emergence of governmental organizations, which will be called FOCJ according to the acronym for “Functional, Overlapping, Competing Jurisdictions”. Their territory is variable, and they do not have a territorial monopoly over it. Rather, they are in competition with other such FOCJ, and they are, moreover, exposed to political competition."
The goal of this paper is to introduce and illustrate a new approach to the stability analysis of sample-paths of nonlinear stochastic economic models with non-stationary components. We place our study within the mathematical theory of random dynamical systems and apply the concept of a random fixed point which is tailor-made for the study of the long-term behavior of sample-paths in stochastic systems. The main tool for the application of this approach is a Banach-type fixed point theorem for non-stationary random dynamical systems which is proved here. The concept and the theorem are thoroughly explained and illustrated by two examples from stochastic growth theory.
Money illusion means that people behave differently when the same objective situation is represented in nominal terms rather than in real terms. This paper shows that seemingly innocuous differences in payoff representation cause pronounced differences in nominal price inertia indicating the behavioral importance of money illusion. In particular, if the payoff information is presented to subjects in nominal terms, price expectations and actual price choices after a fully anticipated negative nominal shock are much stickier than when payoff information is presented in real terms. In addition we show that money illusion causes asymmetric effects of negative and positive nominal shocks. While nominal inertia is quite substantial and long-lasting after a negative shock, it is rather small after a positive shock.
