infonet-economy

Workshop-Präsentation am "Model WTO" 2003; St. Gallen, 11. Juni 2003; Download der Präsentation: (210 KB)

In the past there was hardly any use of economic instruments in environmental policy, mainly command and control measures were used. More recently, ecological taxes as well as tradable permits became more popular and voluntary agreements have been implemented. Using the Public Choice approach we ask for the reasons of this wider acceptance of economic instruments. We conclude that...

The basic idea behind this paper is that voters have to be able to distinguish the positions of the parties. Following Weber's Law this depends on the relative distance with respect to their own optimal position. Using such a measure a model of voter participation is developed which allows for abstention because of indifference as well as alienation. Two variants of this model...

The linkage between the interrelationships of a firm's lines of business and corporate financial performance has been the subject of extensive research in the strategy field. Yet very little research has examined this key relationship within firms operating in Continental Europe. This study investigates firm relatedness and its further relationship to accounting and market-based...

Allocating people into social programmes on the basis of statistical tools has gained increasing acceptance in recent years. The need for better targeting of active labour market programmes recently has arisen in Switzerland, too. Statistically assisted programme allocation could be an effective tool to increase the effectiveness of labour market policies. It is a software tool that...

The paper studies the effects of tax policy on venture capital activity. Entrepreneurs pursue a single high risk project each but have no own resources. Financiers provide funds, covering investment cost plus an upfront payment, in exchange for a share in the firm. The contract must include incentives to enlist full effort of entrepreneurs. Venture capitalists also assist with...

Viele europäische Länder verwenden neben einer passiven Einkommensabsicherung der Arbeitslosen die aktive Arbeitsmarktpolitik, um deren Wiederbeschäftigung zu beschleunigen. Zunehmend setzt sich dabei die Erkenntnis durch, dass diese kostenintensive Politik dem Steuerzahler nur bei nachweisbarem Nutzen langfristig zu vermitteln ist. Auch wenn die Bereitstellung der für seriöse...

We study the inflation uncertainty reported by individual forecasters in the Survey of Professional Forecasters 1969-2001. Three popular measures of uncertainty built from survey data are analyzed in the context of models for forecasting and asset pricing, and improved estimation methods are suggested. Popular time series models are evaluated for their ability to reproduce survey...