Provided that the literature on the deterrent effect of capital punishment is overall
inconclusive, the fact that individual authors persistently claim to have found solid evidence in one or the other direction raises two questions. Firstly, what are the causes for these different results? Do different data samples, estimation methods or time periods lead to different results or do the outcomes merely reflect prior convictions of the authors? Secondly, to what extent is it possible to derive such diverging results by slightly changing the specification of the test equations without violating scientific standards? After a survey of the over forty reviews of this literature available so far, we perform a meta-analysis of 102 deterrence studies published between 1975 and 2011. The profession of the author turns
out to be the only statistically significant explanatory variable: Economists claim significantly more often to have found a significant deterrence effect than embers of law or other social science departments. Furthermore, using a panel data set of U.S. states, we show how easy it is to derive contradictory results by employing alternative specifications. Thus, our results reinforce the claim that the empirical evidence presented to date is by far too fragile in order to base political decisions on it.
From a public choice perspective, the impact of elections on politicians' behavior is of particular interest. Using a panel data set of the 20 largest Swiss cities from 1977 to 2007, this book analyzes whether opportunistic spending behavior around elections is less pronounced if citizens can directly influence fiscal decisions. More specifically, it is being tested whether the presence of mandatory fiscal referenda mitigates electoral budget cycles and the strategic use of debt. The econometric analysis suggests that there is only weak evidence for an electoral budget cycle or strategic use of debt as such. This result is not surprising, since coalition governments are a central feature of Swiss politics. Therefore, both benefits as well as losses related to a change in majority are limited - which reduces the incentive to engage in unsustainable policies for re-election motives. The results further indicate that local public debt is responsive to autocorrelation and business cycle effects. A reduced share of intergovernmental grants is associated with lower deficits. The coalition size and the share of leftist parties in the parliament do not significantly affect local debt.
Non-linear Engel-curves for consumer goods cause continuous structural change. Goods are sequentially introduced starting out as a luxury with high income elasticity and ending up as a necessity with low income elasticity. Although this leads to rising and falling sectoral employment shares, the model exhibits a steady growth path along which the Kaldor facts are satisfied. Extending the basic model to the case of endogenous product innovations shows that complementarities between aggregate and sectoral growth may give rise to multiple equilibria.
We introduce non-homothetic preferences into a general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition and explore the impact of income inequality on the medium-run macroeconomic
equilibrium. We find that (i) a sufficiently high extent of inequality divides the economy into mass consumption sectors (where firms charge low prices and hire many
workers) and exclusive sectors (where firms charge high prices and hire few workers). (ii) High inequality may lead to a situation of underemployment and that underemployment
could be "Keynesian" in the sense that it cannot be cured by downward-flexible real wages. (iii) A redistribution of income from rich to poor (by means of progressive taxation) leads
to higher employment and such a redistribution is Pareto-improving. (iv) An exogenous increase in (minimum) real wages have a cost effect (that lets firms reduce their employment)
and a purchasing power effect (that creates an incentive for mass production and raises aggregate employment) with ambiguous net effects. (v) The economy may feature
multiple equilibria where full-employment and unemployment equilibria co-exist.
Etwa 14 % aller Episoden der Arbeitslosigkeit enden in einem Rückruf .Von Rückruf sprechen wir, wenn eine Person nach Ende ihrer Arbeitslosigkeit beim selben Arbeitgeber angestellt wird, bei dem sie unmittelbar vor der Arbeitslosigkeit beschäftigt gewesen ist. Welches sind die Ursachen, und was sind die Auswirkungen für die Schweiz? Die hier präsentierte Studie betritt Neuland, da sie erstmalig die Ru?ckrufquote für die Schweiz empirisch schätzt. Zudem untersucht sie die gesamtwirtschaftlichen Effekte von Rückrufen auf die Arbeitslosigkeit und die Beschäftigungsstruktur.
