The paper studies the demand for foreign university graduates at the firm level. Using a unique dataset on recruitment policies of firms in four European countries, the determinants of demand for internationally mobile highly skilled employees are established. I investigate the number, origin, skills, and functions of foreign graduates, as well as the experiences of firms recruiting internationally. A number of hypotheses for the international demand are formulated and assessed. Foreign highly-skilled employees are recruited mainly because of their special skills that are not available domestically, be it international competence or technical know-how.
Though the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) has failed, the original draft is likely to serve as a basis for future negotiations. This article gives a critical assessment of the draft from an industrial economics point of view. First, I summarize the contents of the agreement which is relevant for market structure and competition. Then I develop the industrial economics approach, which serves as a basis for criticism. I conclude that a multilateral agreement on investment should (i) recognize competition concerns, (ii) give a suitable de.nition of investment, and (iii) should help to establish competition authorities in less developed countries.
Fuer das Entstehen von Finanzintermediaeren existieren in der theoretischen Literatur zahlreiche ueberzeugende Begruendungen, die konsequent zu Ende gedacht allerdings auf einen Finanzintermediaer als natuerliches Monopol hinauslaufen. Beitraege, die Grenzen fuer das Wachstum von Finanzintermediaeren aufzeigen, sind indessen selten. Das vorliegende Papier baut auf einem Modell von Millon und Thakor auf. Die betrachteten Akteure sind die einzelnen Informationsagenten (z.B. Sachbearbeiter) des Finanzintermediaers, die einen gewissen Aufwand fuer das Sammeln von Informationen ueber ihre Kunden betreiben muessen. Zu einer freiwilligen und oekonomisch sinnvollen Zusammenarbeit zwischen ihnen kommt es nur dann, wenn sie im Rahmen ihrer Zusammenarbeit Informationsteilung betreiben koennen. Die wesentlichen neuen Ergebnisse des vorliegenden Beitrags sind, dass es unter heterogenen Informationsagenten nur zu Gruppenbildungen von recht homogenen (spezialisierten) Agenten kommen wird. Zugleich bestehen aber dynamische Anreizwirkungen, durch welche eben diese Homogenitaet innerhalb eines Finanzintermediaers bedroht wird. Die dynamischen Anreizwirkungen innerhalb eines Finanzintermediaers sind nicht nur fuer die begrenzte Groesse von Finanzintermediaeren verantwortlich, sondern koennen sogar den Keim fuer eine spaetere Aufspaltung oder Aufloesung von Finanzintermediaeren bilden.
This paper analyzes the equilibrium outcomes in a network industry under daccess pricing, investment, vertical foreclosureifferent vertical market structures. In this industry, an upstream monopolist operates a network used as an input to produce horizontally differentiated final products that are imperfect substitutes. Three potential drawbacks of market structure regulation are analyzed: (i) double marginalization, (ii) underinvestment, and (iii) vertical foreclosure. We explore the conditions under which these effects emerge and discuss when the breakup of an integrated network monopolist is adequate.
This paper studies a network provider's incentives to invest in infrastructure quality. In a simple but general framework, we investigate how various institutional settings affect investment incentives. We show that under reasonable assumptions on demand, investment incentives are smaller under vertical separation than under vertical integration. We consider two strategies for improving investment incentives under vertical separation. First, the introduction of competition for the market can sometimes improve incentives. Second, with non-linear access prices investment incentives under separation become identical to those under integration.
Based upon time series data published by PTT prior to regulatory reform, this paper investigates whether Swiss telecommunications qualify as a natural monopoly. Employing the subadditivity concept for multiproduct industries, alternative specifications of quadratic cost functions are estimated. The results of these estimations are ambiguous and demonstrate the difficulty of empirically substantiating a natural monoply claim. It is argued that the natural monopoly concept is of limited usefulness for informing policy decisions.
This paper develops a simple reduced form model of two-way network competition with linear retail pricing. Using the techniques of supermodular games, it is demonstrated that the most important results from the existing literature do not depend on routinely invoked assumptions, such as specific functional forms or the symmetry of the network operators. In particular, it is demonstrated that (i) firms do not need to be symmetric or regulated to have incentives to collude in access pricing, and (ii) due to the effects on social welfare, enforcing colluding firms to behave noncooperatively is not necessarily desirable.
Health insurance is potentially subject to risk selection, i.e. adverse selection on the part of consumers and cream skimming on the part of insurers. Adverse selection models predict that competitive health insurers can eschew high-risk individuals by o¤ering contracts with low deductibles or co-payment rates, while attracting low-risk individuals with higher copayments, resulting in a separating equilibrium. This contribution seeks to determine whether in competitive Swiss social health insurance policies with deductibles in excess of the legal minimum do indeed serve as an instrument of risk selection. In a discrete choice experiment, e¤ected in 2003, some 1,000 individuals were given the hypothetical choice of alternative insurance contracts that differed both in terms of deductibles and copayments and in bene.ts covered. Results suggest that healthy individuals, i.e. those not having consulted medical services during the past six months, were more likely to select a policy with a high deductible. Compensation demanded for voluntarily accepting an increase in the annual deductible also varies with socioeconomic characteristics and increases with the current level of deductible, as predicted by theory and constituting evidence in favor of the risk selection hypothesis. The experiment allows to compute necessary premium reductions and provides guidance for the pricing policy of insurers when o¤ering di¤erentiated products.
We examine the effect of single motherhood on children’s secondary school track choice using 12-year-old children drawn from the German Socio-Economic Panel. In line with previous studies for the U.S., the U.K. and Sweden, we find a negative correlation between single motherhood and children’s educational attainment. Looking for alternative explanations for this correlation, we use probit regression models to control for factors related to single motherhood such as higher educational background, lower household income and higher labor supply of the mother. Our evidence suggests that single motherhood reduces school attainment mainly because it is associated with lower resources (household income) available for the child.
This contribution seeks to answer two related questions. First, what is the purpose of social health insurance? Or put in slightly different terms, what are the reasons for social (or public) health insurance to exist, even to dominate private health insurance in most developed countries? And second, what are the limits of social health insurance? Can one say that there is "too much" social health insurance in the following two senses: Should the balance be shifted towards the private alternative? And is the degree of coverage excessive?
