infonet-economy

Organizations depend on members' "loyalty" for their success. Studying a cooperative's attempt to increase deliveries by members, we show that the threat of sanctions leads to highly heterogeneous response among members. Despite the cooperative not actually enforcing the threatened sanctions, positive effects for some members persist for several months. Other...

Die Schweiz geht zu einer neuen Wirtschaftsform über. Weiss (freie Marktwirtschaft) oder Schwarz (reine Staatswirtschaft) war zwar nie, dem Bundesrat schwebt aber eine besondere Schattierung von Dunkelgrau vor. Er sieht die Unternehmen neu als verlängerten Arm des Staates. «Der Bund erwartet von den Wirtschaftsakteuren, dass sie ihre gesellschaftliche Verantwortung wahrnehmen»,...

We investigate price discovery over the 24-hour trading day for equities, currencies, bonds, and commodities. Sizable price discovery occurs around the clock for most assets. For a given asset, intraday risk and return distributions are fairly similar, indicating a broadly constant risk-return-relationship during the day. Although the amount of price discovery varies significantly...

This paper analyzes responsibility attributions for outcomes of collective decision making processes. In particular, we ask if decision makers are blamed for being pivotal if they implement an unpopular outcome in a sequential voting process. We conduct an experimental voting game in which decision makers vote about the allocation of money between themselves and recipients without...

We investigate geoengineering as a possible substitute for adaptation and mitigation measures to address climate change. With the help of an integrated assessment model, we distinguish between the effects of solar radiation management on atmospheric temperature levels and its side-effects on ecosystems. To address the uncertainty regarding the magnitude of side-effects, we rely on a...

To what extent is public debt private liquidity? Much policy advice given in the aftermath of the financial crisis rests on the assumption that increasing public debt relaxes borrowing constraints of private households. This is the case for ad-hoc debt limits, which are exogenous to public policy. Instead, if debt limits are fully endogenous, as e.g. in the case of the natural...

We measure the consequences of asymmetric information and imperfect competition in the Italian lending market. We show that banks' optimal price response to an increase in adverse selection varies with competition. Exploiting matched data on loans and defaults, we estimate models of demand for credit, loan use, pricing, and firm default. We find evidence of adverse selection and...

This paper develops a method to measure and compare social performance of microfinance investments at the level of microfinance investment vehicles. Drawing from measurement theory, it develops formal quality criteria that individual social performance indicators, the selection, and the aggregation of such indicators into a single metric need to satisfy. Social performance indicators...