We analyze the effects of the unprecedented rise in trade between Germany and "the East" – China and Eastern Europe – in the period 1988 – 2008 on German local labor markets. Using detailed administrative data, we exploit the cross-regional variation in initial industry structures and use trade flows of other high-income countries as instruments for regional import and export exposure. We find that the rise of "the East" in the world economy caused substantial job losses in German regions specialized in import-competing industries, both in manufacturing and beyond. Regions specialized in export-oriented industries, however, experienced even stronger employment gains and lower unemployment. In the aggregate, we estimate that this trade integration has caused some 493,000 additional jobs in the economy and contributed to retaining the manufacturing sector in Germany. We also conduct our analysis at the individual worker level, and find that trade had a stabilizing overall effect on employment relationships.
We consider general social choice environments with private values and correlated types. Each agent's matrix of conditional probabilities satisfies the full rank condition. We show that for any Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism there exists a dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanism that delivers the same interim expected utilities to all agents and generates at least the same social surplus. In addition, if there is a social alternative that is inferior to the other alternatives for all agents the dominant strategy incentive compatible mechanism matches exactly the social surplus. These results extend to environments with interdependent values satisfying the single crossing condition.
Das Buch zeigt die Zusammenhänge zwischen Innovationen bzw. Innovationsprozessen mit der Entwicklung moderner Volkswirtschaften. Untersucht werden die Faktoren und ihre Interaktionen, die für die Leistung der Innovationssysteme von Regionen oder ganzer Nationen verantwortlich sind. Dabei geht es um die Beiträge des Bildungssystems, der öffentlichen und privaten Forschungs- und Entwicklungsaktivitäten, von Unternehmen mit ihren Innovationsstrategien inklusive den staatlichen Rahmenbedingungen wie dem Schutz des geistigen Eigentums. Umsetzung und Diffusion von Innovationen werden unter anderem anhand von Unternehmensgründungen geprüft. Damit verbundene Innovationsnetzwerke entwickeln sich unter dem Druck und in der hohen Dynamik der Globalisierung weiter.
Zusätzliche Kapitel behandeln politische Strategien von Nationen und Regionen, die sich im globalen Innovationswettbewerb behaupten wollen. Dabei werden aus polit-ökonomischer Sicht die Faktoren von Erfolg und Misserfolg im globalen Innovationswettbewerb der führenden Nationen in Europa mit den USA und den wichtigsten asiatischen Staaten verglichen und die künftige Entwicklung dieser Volkswirtschaften abgeschätzt.
Die Zielgruppen
- Forscher und Studierende der Innovationsökonomie
- Medienmitarbeiter, Journalisten und alle, die mit Ökonomie und Politik von Innovationen in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft zu tun haben und diese gestalten wollen
Die Autoren
Dr. Beat Hotz-Hart ist Professor der Universität Zürich und langjähriges Mitglied des höheren Kaders der Bundesverwaltung der Schweiz in den Ressorts Bildung, Forschung und Innovation. Dr. Adrian Rohner ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Zürich. In seiner Dissertation untersuchte er den Markt für wissensintensive Güter am Beispiel von Dienstleistungen in Forschung und Entwicklung.
Policy makers around the world seek to encourage generic substitution. In this paper, the importance of prescribing physicians’ imperfect agency is tested using the fact that some Swiss jurisdictions allow physicians to dispense drugs on their own account (physician dispensing, PD) while others disallow it. We estimate a model of physician drug choice with the help of drug claim data, finding a significant positive association between PD and the use of generics. While this points to imperfect agency, generics are prescribed more often to patients with high copayments or low incomes.
Neuromodulators such as serotonin, oxytocin, and testosterone play an important role in social behavior. Studies examining the effects of these neuromodulators and others on social cognition and behavior, and their neural underpinnings, are becoming increasingly common. Here, we provide an overview of methodological considerations for those wishing to evaluate or conduct empirical studies of neuromodulation in social neuroscience.
People's desire for fair transactions can play an important role in negotiations, organizations, and markets. In this paper, we show that markets can also shape what people consider to be a fair transaction. We propose a simple and generally-applicable model of path-dependent fairness preferences, in which past experiences shape preferences, and we experimentally test the model's predictions. We find that previous exposure to competitive pressure substantially and persistently reduces subjects' fairness concerns, making them more likely to accept low offers. Consistent with our theory, we also find that past experience has little effect on subjects' inclinations to treat others unfairly.
Evolutionary theory predicts that observable traits should evolve to reliably indicate unobservable behavioral tendencies in coordination games but not social dilemmas. We conducted a two-part study to test this idea. First, we recorded 60-s videos of participants, and then these participants played a stag hunt game or a prisoner’s dilemma. Subsequently, raters viewed these videos, with the sound either off or on, and they guessed player choices. Raters showed a significant tendency to guess that attractive players chose stag. In contrast to the prediction, rater accuracy was at chance regardless of whether the sound of the video was off or on. For prisoner’s dilemma players, raters showed a significant tendency to guess that women cooperated at a higher rate than men. Again in contrast to the prediction, accuracy was significantly above chance in this case. To calibrate the importance of this accuracy rate, we developed two models that suggest the accuracy we observed in the prisoner’s dilemma case is probably not high enough to support the evolution of cooperation. Altogether, our results show that raters tried to achieve a meaningful degree of accuracy about players by using the limited information available in the videos, but they could not do so.
