infonet-economy

Naturkatastrophen wie Erdbeben sind typische Risiken mit einer geringen Wahrscheinlichkeit, das Schadenausmass jedoch kann riesig sein. In den vergangenen Jahrzehnten sind Schäden aus Erdbeben sowohl in der Häufigkeit wie auch im Ausmass gestiegen. Da Erdbeben ein seltenes Ereignis darstellen, besteht zudem ein mangelndes Interesse an Investitionen in präventive Massnahmen und...

There is abundant evidence that many individuals violate the rationality assumptionsnroutinely made in economics. However, powerful evidence also indicates that violations ofnindividual rationality do not necessarily refute the aggregate predictions of standard economicnmodels that assume full rationality of all agents. Thus, a key question is how the interactions between rational...

Over the last twenty years, many researchers have attempted to explain the determinants of wage inequality. I propose a flexible, intuitive and semiparametric estimator of distribution functions in the presence of covariates. The conditional wage distribution is estimated by quantile regressions. Then, the conditional distribution is integrated over the range of the covariates to...

We examine the interplay of endogenous vertical integration and costreducing downstream investment in successive oligopoly. We start from a linear Cournot model to motivate our more general reducedform framework. For this general framework, we establish the following main results: First, vertical integration increases own investment and decreases competitor investment (intimidation...

How a sustainable fiscal policy can be performed in a federal system is not only a Swiss problem but is also discussed in other federal countries like Germany and Austria, and in the European Union. Contrary to most other countries, the Swiss Fiscal system is characterised by an extensive fiscal federalism with high fiscal autonomy at all govermental levels, by direct popular rights...

Trust pervades human societies. Trust is indispensable in friendship, love, families and organizations, and plays a key role in economic exchange and politics. In the absence of trust among trading partners, market transactions break down. In the absence of trust in a country's institutions and leaders, political legitimacy breaks down. Much recent evidence indicates that trust...

In this paper we analyze the behavioral consequences of control on motivation. Wenstudy a simple experimental principal-agent game, where the principal decides whethernhe controls the agent by implementing a minimum performance requirement before the agent chooses a productive activity. Our main finding is that a principal's decisionnto control has a negative impact on the agent...

"The most fundamental solution concepts in Game Theory – Nash equilibrium, backward induction, and iterated elimination of dominated strategies – are based on the assumption that people are capable of predicting others' actions. These concepts require people to be able to view the game from the other players’ perspectives, i.e. to understand others’ motives and beliefs....

When the performance of a risky asset is frequently assessed, the probability of detecting a loss is high, which averts the loss averse investors. This effect is known as myopic loss aversion (MLA). This paper reexamines several recent experimental studies documenting the existence of MLA. A closer look at the experimental data reveals that the effect of MLA is largely neutralized by...