infonet-economy

Abrahamsen, Yngve; Abberger, Klaus; Chatagny, Florian; Dibiasi, Andreas; Eckert, Florian; Eichenberger, Livia; Funk, Anne Kathrin; Graff, Michael; Hälg, Florian; Iselin, David; Mikosch, Heiner; Neuwirth, Stefan; Sandqvist, Anna Pauliina; Rathke, Alexander; Sarferaz, Samad; Siegenthaler, Michael; Simmons-Süer, Banu; Stücker, Anne; Studer, Dominik; Sturm, Jan-Egbert

Wir haben nur so viel, weil die anderen so wenig haben. Wären wir grosszügiger, ginge es allen besser. So denken die meisten. Sie irren sich.

Expressive law is said to induce compliance with stated principles without a price on non-compliance. We empirically assess this proposition, by attempting to dis-entangle the impacts of a legal change (a 5p charge on use of plastic bags), on individual choices. We do so by measuring both behaviours and attitudes across the first two months of the legal change, and by comparing the...

This paper investigates the impact of investor information on financial innovation. We identify specific channels through which issuers of financially engineered products exploit retail investors by using their privileged access to information. Our results imply that imperfect investor information regarding volatility and dividends is crucial to explain the pricing and design of...

This paper introduces a new method for deriving covariance matrix estimators that are decision-theoretically optimal within a class of nonlinear shrinkage estimators. The key is to employ large-dimensional asymptotics: the matrix dimension and the sample size go to infinity together, with their ratio converging to a finite, nonzero limit. As the main focus, we apply this method to...

In recent years, the banking industry has witnessed several cases of excessive risk-taking that frequently have been attributed to problematic professional norms. We conduct experiments with employees from several banks in which we manipulate the saliency of their professional identity and subsequently measure their risk aversion in a real stakes investment task. If bank employees...

It is shown that the equilibrium in the asymmetric Tullock contest is unique for parameter values r ≤ 2. This allows proving a revenue ranking result saying that a revenue-maximizing designer capable of biasing the contest always prefers a contest technology with higher accuracy.

We measure the "new" gains from trade reaped by Canada as a result of the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA). We think of the "new" gains from trade of a country as all welfare effects pertaining to changes in the set of firms serving that country as emphasized in the so-called "new" trade literature. To this end, we first develop an exact...

Mit dem Inkrafttreten des neuen Erwachsenenschutzrechts per 1. Januar 2013 wurde die fürsorgerische Freiheitsentziehung (FFE) in fürsorgerische Unterbringung (FU) umbenannt. Bei der Frage, ob eine solche auch bei diesbezüglich urteilsfähigen Personen zulässig ist, gehen die juristischen und medizinethischen Meinungen jedoch auseinander.