Publications des institutions partenaires

S'abonner aux flux infonet economy   941 - 960 of 4030

Agricultural productivity and structural transformation : evidence from Brazil

We study the effects of the adoption of new agricultural technologies on structural transformation. To guide empirical work, we present a simple model where the effect of agricultural productivity on industrial development depends on the factor bias of technical change. We test the predictions of the model by studying the introduction of genetically engineered soybean seeds in Brazil...

Full Text

English / 01/06/2015

China – from investment-led to innovation-led growth

As China's economy becomes more liberalized, the authorities will scrap growth targets altogether and turn to the more modest notion of growth forecasts.

Full Text

English / 01/06/2015

The Rise of the Machines: Automation, Horizontal Innovation and Income Inequality

We construct an endogenous growth model with automation (the introduction of machines which replace low-skill labor) and horizontal innovation. The economy follows three phases. First, low-skill wages are low, which induces little automation, and income inequality and labor’s share of GDP are constant. Second, as low-skill wages increase, automation increases which reduces the labor...

Full Text

English / 01/06/2015

Framing effects and risk perception: testing graphical representations of risk for the KIID

In this paper we analyze which graphical representation of risk is most effective in supporting investors to assess the risk and return characteristics of a fund. Moreover, we test on which criteria the investors base their risk taking behavior. To this end we compare return bar charts and price line charts, combined with some additional information such as a risk scale or a gain and...

Full Text

English / 15/05/2015

Sustainability and risk Combining Monte Carlo simulation and DCF for Swiss residential buildings

Purpose – This paper aims to identify the relative contribution of sustainability criteria to property value risk. Design/methodology/approach – Adiscounted cash flow (DCF) model is used to assess the effect of a given set of 42 sustainability sub-indicators on property value. The anticipated demand for each sustainability sub-indicator is described by four future states of nature....

Full Text

English / 13/05/2015

Dynamics of innovation and risks

We study the dynamics of an innovative industry when agents learn about its strength, i.e., the likelihood that it gets hit by negative shocks. Managers can exert risk-prevention effort to mitigate the consequences of such shocks. As time goes by, if no shock occurs, confidence improves. This attracts managers to the innovative sector. But, when confidence becomes high, less managers...

Full Text

English / 05/05/2015

Bad boys: how criminal identity salience affects rule violation

We conducted an experiment with 182 inmates from a maximum security prison to analyze the impact of criminal identity salience on cheating. The results show that inmates cheat more when we exogenously render their criminal identity more salient. This effect is specific to individuals who have a criminal identity, because an additional placebo experiment shows that regular citizens do...

Full Text

English / 01/05/2015

Counting on count data models : Quantitative policy evaluation can benefit from a rich set of econometric methods for analyzing count data

Often, economic policies are directed toward outcomes that are measured as counts. Examples of economic variables that use a basic counting scale are number of children as an indicator of fertility, number of doctor visits as an indicator of health care demand, and number of days absent from work as an indicator of employee shirking. Several econometric methods are available for...

Full Text

English / 01/05/2015

Apathy in schizophrenia as a deficit in the generation of options for action

Negative symptoms are a core feature of schizophrenia and have been grouped into 2 factors: a motivational factor, which we refer to as apathy, and a diminished expression factor. Recent studies have shown that apathy is closely linked to functional outcome. However, knowledge about its mechanisms and its relation to decision-making is limited. In the current study, we examined...

Full Text

English / 01/05/2015

Debt into growth: how sovereign debt accelerated the first industrial revolution

Why did the country that borrowed the most industrialize first? Earlier research has viewed the explosion of debt in 18th century Britain as either detrimental, or as neutral for economic growth. In this paper, we argue instead that Britain’s borrowing boom was beneficial. The massive issuance of liquidly traded bonds allowed the nobility to switch out of low-return investments such...

Full Text

English / 01/05/2015

Eye spots do not increase altruism in children

The evolutionary legacy hypothesis proposes that an evolved reciprocity-based psychology affects human behavior in anonymous one-shot interactions when reciprocity is not explicitly possible. Empirical support rests on experiments showing that altruism among adults increases in the presence of stylized eye spots or faces. Such stimuli do not affect material payoffs, but they are...

Full Text

English / 01/05/2015

Untangling trade and technology: evidence from local labour markets

We juxtapose the effects of trade and technology on employment in US local labour markets between 1980 and 2007. Labour markets whose initial industry composition exposes them to rising Chinese import competition experience significant falls in employment, particularly in manufacturing and among non-college workers. Labour markets susceptible to computerisation due to specialisation...

Full Text

English / 01/05/2015

Loyalty, exit, and enforcement: evidence from a Kenya dairy cooperative

Organizations depend on members' "loyalty" for their success. Studying a cooperative's attempt to increase deliveries by members, we show that the threat of sanctions leads to highly heterogeneous response among members. Despite the cooperative not actually enforcing the threatened sanctions, positive effects for some members persist for several months. Other...

Full Text

English / 01/05/2015

Identity-specific coding of future rewards in the human orbitofrontal cortex

Nervous systems must encode information about the identity of expected outcomes to make adaptive decisions. However, the neural mechanisms underlying identity-specific value signaling remain poorly understood. By manipulating the value and identity of appetizing food odors in a pattern-based imaging paradigm of human classical conditioning, we were able to identify dissociable...

Full Text

English / 21/04/2015

Risk and Return around the Clock

We investigate price discovery over the 24-hour trading day for equities, currencies, bonds, and commodities. Sizable price discovery occurs around the clock for most assets. For a given asset, intraday risk and return distributions are fairly similar, indicating a broadly constant risk-return-relationship during the day. Although the amount of price discovery varies significantly...

Full Text

English / 14/04/2015

Parenting styles and economics

Does the economy influence the way people bring up their children? How can we determine and measure a child’s utility? How can parenting styles be categorized in an economic model? These are the questions that Professor Fabricio Zilibotti of the University of Zurich addressed in his honorary lecture ‘Parenting with Style’, which he delivered at the April International Academic...

Full Text

English / 10/04/2015

Pivotality and responsibility attribution in sequential voting

This paper analyzes responsibility attributions for outcomes of collective decision making processes. In particular, we ask if decision makers are blamed for being pivotal if they implement an unpopular outcome in a sequential voting process. We conduct an experimental voting game in which decision makers vote about the allocation of money between themselves and recipients without...

Full Text

English / 04/04/2015

Is there room for geoengineering in the optimal climate policy mix?

We investigate geoengineering as a possible substitute for adaptation and mitigation measures to address climate change. With the help of an integrated assessment model, we distinguish between the effects of solar radiation management on atmospheric temperature levels and its side-effects on ecosystems. To address the uncertainty regarding the magnitude of side-effects, we rely on a...

Full Text

English / 01/04/2015

Pages

Le portail de l'information économique suisse

© 2016 Infonet Economy