infonet-economy

We provide a cultural explanation to the phenomenon of corruption in the framework of an overlapping generations model with intergenerational transmission of values. We show that the economy has two steady states with different levels of corruption. The driving force in the equilibrium selection process is the education effort exerted by parents which depends on the distribution of...

Present anti-terrorist policy concentrates almost exclusively on deterrence. It seeks to fend off terrorism by raising the cost of undertaking terrorist acts. This paper argues that deterrence policy is less effective than generally thoughtnand induces in some cases even more terrorism. This is, in particular, the case if deterrence policy induces a centralisation of decision-making...

Public choice theory takes citizens as rationally ignorant about political issues, because the costs of being informed greatly exceed the utility individuals derive from it. The costs of information (supply side) as well as the utility of information (demand side), however, can vary substantially depending on the political system under which citizens live. Using survey data from the...

In this paper, we suggest a novel approach to program evaluation that allows identification of the causal effect of a training program on the likelihood of being invited to a job interview under weak assumptions. The idea is to measure the program-effects by pre- and post-treatment data that are very close in time for the same individual. Our approach provides useful information on...

We examine experimentally how Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) respond to incentives and how they provide incentives in situations requiring trust and trustworthiness. As a control we compare the behavior of CEOs with the behavior of students. We find that CEOs are consider-ably more trusting and exhibit more trustworthiness than students-thus reaching substantially higher efficiency...

We study the role of public policy in promoting efficiency in human capital accumulation. Agents accumulate human capital by allocating time to home study and school attendance. The return to time spent in school is subject to congestion. The individual also faces an aggregate externality in skill accumulation. We find that a tuition fee combined with personal stipends can correct...

In the mid-1980s many nations imposed sanctions on South African exports, most of which were subsequently removed during 1991-3. I estimate the effect of eight industrialized economies' sanctions on their imports from South Africa. Outliers are found to strongly influence the parameter estimates. Failure to take account of them leads to the conclusion that sanctions by the (then...

In the second part of the 1990's Switzerland conducted an ambitious active labour market policy (ALMP) encompassing a wide variety of programmes. We evaluate the effects of these programmes on the individual employment probability of potential participants. Our econometric analysis uses unusually informative data origi-nating from administrative unemployment and social security...