infonet-economy

Networks can establish business connections and facilitate information flows; but how valuable are they in competitive settings, such as in the deal generation of private equity funds? We find that educational ties between management teams of acquiring fund and target company are frequent (around 15%) and increase the odds of winning a deal (by 79%). When competing with other funds,...

This article is based on the presidential address delivered at the EEA Annual Congress 2016. It discusses China’s institutional and economic transformation through the lens of the model of growth and convergence developed in Acemoglu, Aghion, and Zilibotti (JEEA 2006), which emphasizes the dichotomy between investment- and innovation-led growth. The economic reforms introduced in the...

Die Kündigungsfreiheit wird durch eine Reihe von zeitlichen und sachlichen Vorschriften beschränkt. Die interessierenden Art. 336–336b OR befassen sich mit dem sachlichen Kündigungsschutz. Dieser bleibt unter dem europäischen Standard. Untersagt ist lediglich die missbräuchliche Kündigung. Wer das Arbeitsverhältnis aus Gründen kündigt, die das Gesetz als missbräuchlich bezeichnet,...

We study optimal incentive contracts with multiple agents when performance evaluation is delegated to a reviewer. The reviewer may be biased in favor of the agents, but the degree of the bias is unknown to the principal. We show that a contest, which is a contract in which the principal determines a set of prizes to be allocated to the agents, is optimal. By using a contest, the...

We document two facts. First, during the Great Recession, consumers traded down in the quality of the goods and services they consumed. Second, the production of low-quality goods is less labor intensive than that of high-quality goods. When households traded down, labor demand fell, increasing the severity of the recession. We find that the trading-down phenomenon accounts for a...

This paper introduces a new information density indicator to provide a more comprehensive understanding of price reactions to news and, more specifically, to the sources of jumps in financial markets. Our information density indicator, which measures the abnormal amount of noisy "ticker" news before scheduled macroeconomic announcements, is significantly related to the...

We address the heated debate over the staggered board. One theory claims that a staggered board facilitates entrenchment of inefficient management and thus harms corporate value. Consequently, some institutional investors and shareholder rights advocates have argued for the elimination of the staggered board. The opposite theory is that staggered boards are value enhancing since they...

Egger, Peter; Püschel, Nicole; Loumeau, Gabriel