Because of the public good character of global emissions it is difficult to implement reduction
targets as formulated at Toronto or Rio. This paper presents a simple mechanism for inducing
efficient contributions to the reductions of emissions as a non-cooperative equilibrium. The
world is partitioned into groups of countries, and then each country is taxed or subsidised
according to its relative performance in the group. We estimate abatement cost- and benefit
functions for 135 countries and simulate the mechanism for different groupings of countries. The simulations show that the involved global budget is the smaller the finer the partition and the more equal the countries within a group. Moreover, with such a partition most countries
profit from the mechanism so that broad political support may be expected. If groups are composed of unequal countries, then the mechanism leads to a more egalitarian distribution of world income and welfare.
The paper presents an empirical analysis of a model of endogenous growth and innovation with unequal incomes and hierarchical consumer demand. The theoretical model predicts a positive impact of income inequality on product diversity. The impact of inequality on per-capita growth may be positive or negative depending upon the assumptions about productivity growth, where the standard assumption that productivity is positively related to product diversity implies a positive impact. In the empirical part, indices for absolute and relative product diversity are calculated from ICP-expenditure data. The empirical evidence shows that a significant positive relationship exists between income inequality and relative product diversity and that the relationship between income inequality and economic growth is negative and significant. The results lead to the conclusion that the diversity-productivity relationship used in new growth theory has to be treated with scepticism.
A new macroeconomic equilibrium theory is presented which gives a rigorous economic foundation of the notion of employability. Employability depends on the one side on the workers' interactive abilities, but on the other side also on the skill requirements implied by the organizational environment provided by firms. It is shown that the range of abilities which is considered as unemployable by the firms varies with the competitive pressure in the goods market as well as with the used organization methods. Under fairly general conditions the resulting level of equilibrium employment is lower than the efficient level.
Under typical conditions, medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) connections with the amygdala are immature during childhood and become adult-like during adolescence. Rodent models show that maternal deprivation accelerates this development, prompting examination of human amygdala-mPFC phenotypes following maternal deprivation. Previously institutionalized youths, who experienced early maternal deprivation, exhibited atypical amygdala-mPFC connectivity. Specifically, unlike the immature connectivity (positive amygdala-mPFC coupling) of comparison children, children with a history of early adversity evidenced mature connectivity (negative amygdala-mPFC coupling) and thus, resembled the adolescent phenotype. This connectivity pattern was mediated by the hormone cortisol, suggesting that stress-induced modifications of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis shape amygdala-mPFC circuitry. Despite being age-atypical, negative amygdala-mPFC coupling conferred some degree of reduced anxiety, although anxiety was still significantly higher in the previously institutionalized group. These findings suggest that accelerated amygdala-mPFC development is an ontogenetic adaptation in response to early adversity.
During industrialization, Protestants were more literate than Catholics. This paper investigates whether this fact may be led back to the intrinsic motivation of Protestants to read the bible and to what extent other education motives might have been involved as well. We employ a historical data set from Switzerland which allows us to differentiate between different cognitive skills: reading, numeracy, essay writing and Swiss history. We develop an estimation strategy to examine whether the impact of religious denomination was particularly large with respect to reading capabilities. We find support for this hypothesis. However, we also find evidence which is consistent with the view that Protestants’ education otives went beyond acquiring reading skills.
Continuous Arterial Spin Labeling (CASL) offers the possibility to quantitatively measure the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF). We demonstrate, for the first time, the feasibility of interleaving Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) with CASL at 3 T. Two different repetitive TMS (rTMS) protocols were applied to the motor cortex in 10 subjects and the effect on rCBF was measured using a CASL sequence with separate RF coils for labeling the inflowing blood. Each subject was investigated, using a block design, under 7 different conditions: continuous 2 Hz rTMS (3 intensities: 100%, 110% and 120% resting motor threshold MT), short 10 Hz rTMS trains at 110% MT (8 pulses per train; 3 different numbers of trains per block with 2, 4 and 12 s intervals between trains) and volitional movement (acoustically triggered by 50% MT stimuli). We show robust rCBF increases in motor and premotor areas due to rTMS, even at the lowest stimulation intensity of 100% MT. RCBF exhibited a linear positive dependency on stimulation intensity (for continuous 2 Hz rTMS) and the number of 10 Hz trains in the stimulated M1/S1 as well as in premotor and supplementary motor areas. Interestingly, the 2 different rTMS protocols yielded markedly different rCBF activation time courses, which did not correlate with the electromyographic recordings of the muscle responses. In future, this novel combination of TMS with ASL will offer the possibility to investigate the immediate and after-effects of rTMS stimulation on rCBF, which previously was only possible using PET.
This paper studies the effect of a large-scale policy change in the Austrian disability insurance program, which tightened eligibility criteria for men above a certain age. Using administrative data on the universe of Austrian private-sector employees, the results of difference-in-difference regressions suggest a substantial and statistically significant decline in disability enrollment of 6 to 7.4 percentage points and an increase in employment of 1.6 to 3.4 percentage points. The policy change had important spillover effects into the unemployment and sickness insurance program. Specifically, the share of individuals receiving unemployment benefits increased by 3.5 to 3.9 percentage points, and the share receiving sickness insurance benefits, by roughly 0.7 percentage points.
Parental leave regulations in most OECD countries have two key policy instruments: jobprotection and cash benefits. This paper studies how mothers’ return to work behavior andlabor market outcomes are affected by alternative mixes of these key policy parameters.Exploiting a series of major parental leave policy changes in Austria, we find that longer cashbenefits lead to a significant delay in return to work and that the magnitude of this effectdepends on the relative length of job protection and cash benefits. However, despite theirimpact on time on leave, we do not find a significant effect on mothers’ labor marketoutcomes in the medium run, neither of benefit duration nor of job-protection duration. Tounderstand the relative importance (and interaction) of the two policy instruments in shapingmothers’ return to work behavior, we set up a non-stationary job search model in which cashbenefits and job protection determine decisions of when to return to work and whether or notto return to the pre-birth employer. Despite its lean structure, the model does surprisingly wellin matching empirically observed return to work profiles. The simulation of alternativecounterfactual regimes shows that a policy that combines both job protection and benefitspayments succeeds to induce mothers to spend some time with the child after birth withoutjeopardizing their medium run labor market attachment.
Slowing climate change will almost certainly require a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, but agreement on who
should reduce emissions by how much is difficult, in part because of the self-serving bias—the tendency to believe that what is beneficial to oneself is also fair. Conducting surveys among college students in the United States and China, we show that each of these groups displays a nationalistic self-serving bias in judgments of a fair distribution of economic burdens resulting from mitigation. Yet, we also show, by disguising the problem and the identity of the parties, that it is possible to elicit perceptions of fairness that are not influenced by national interests. Our research reveals that the self-serving bias plays a major role in the difficulty of obtaining agreement on how to implement emissions reductions.
That is, the disagreement over what constitutes fair climate policy does not appear to be due to cross-national differences in what constitutes a fair distribution of burdens. Interventions to mitigate the self-serving bias may facilitate agreement.
