Massimo Filippini, Jörg Wild, Ein Pool-Modell für die schweizerische Elektrizitätswirtschaft, In: Working paper series / Socioeconomic Institute, No. No. 9701, 1997. (Working Paper)
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Josef Falkinger, Josef Zweimüller, The impact of income inequality on product diversity and long-run economic growth in a model with hierarchical demand, Metroeconomica, Vol. 48 (3), 1997. (Journal Article)
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. |
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Liliana Winkelmann, Rainer Winkelmann, Why are the unemployed so unhappy? Evidence from panel data, Economica, Vol. 65 (257), 1997. (Journal Article)
This paper tests for the importance of non-pecuniary costs of unemployment using a longitudinal data-set on life-satisfaction of working-age men in Germany. We show that unemployment has a large detrimental effect on satisfaction after individual specific fixed effects are controlled for. The non-pecuniary effect is much larger than the effect that stems from the associated loss of income. |
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Daron Acemoglu, Fabrizio Zilibotti, Was prometheus unbound by chance? Risk diversification and growth, European Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 105, 1997. (Journal Article)
This paper offers a theory of development that links the degree of market incompleteness to capital accumulation and growth. At early stages of development, the presence projects limits the degree of risk spreading (diversification) that the economy can achieve. The desire to avoid highly risky investments slows down capital accumulation, and the inability to diversify idiosyncratic risk introduces a large amount of uncertainty in the growth process. The typical development pattern will consist of a lengthy period of “primitive accumulation” with highly variable output, followed by takeoff and financial deepening and, finally, steady growth. “Lucky” countries will spend relatively less time in the primitive accumulation stage and develop faster. Although all agents are price takers and there are no technological spillovers, the decentralized equilibrium is inefficient because individuals do not take into account their impact on others' diversification opportunities. We also show that our results generalize to economies with international capital flows. |
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Peter Zweifel, Comment on: F.M. Scherer, "How US antitrust can go astray: the brand name prescription drug litigation", International Journal of the Economics of Business, Vol. 4 (3), 1997. (Journal Article)
Comments on the article `How US Antirust Can Go Astray: The Brand Name Prescription Drug Litigation,' by F.M. Scherer. Discussion of the issue of patent protection; Uniform monopoly price; Summary of price differentiation between groups of consumers. |
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Rainer Winkelmann, How young workers get their training: A survey of Germany versus the United States, Journal of Population Economics, Vol. 10 (2), 1997. (Journal Article)
The recent economic literature on the incidence of various forms of post-secondary on-the-job and off-the-job training in Germany and the United States, as well as on the effects of training on wages, inequality, and labor mobility is surveyed. Young workers in Germany receive substantially more company-based (apprenticeship) training than United States workers. In the United States, high turnover deters firms from investing in general skills while it results in improved job matches. The received literature consents that key institutional elements required to make the German apprenticeship system work are absent in the United States. |
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Jacob Goeree, M. Minkman, The Demand for Soccer, Kwantitatieve Methoden, Vol. 54, 1997. (Journal Article)
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Simon P. Anderson, Jacob Goeree, Roald Ramer, Location, Location, Location, Journal of Economic Theory, Vol. 77 (1), 1997. (Journal Article)
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Christian Ewerhart, Bayesian Optimization and Genericity, Operations Research Letters , Vol. 21, 1997. (Journal Article)
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Christian Ewerhart, Patrick W Schmitz, Der Lock-in Effekt und das Hold-up Problem, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliches Studium, Vol. 26, 1997. (Journal Article)
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Christian Ewerhart, Patrick W Schmitz, Ausgewählte Anwendungen der Theorie unvollständiger Verträge, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Vol. 48, 1997. (Journal Article)
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Armin Schmutzler, Lawrence H Goulder, The choice between emission taxes and output taxes under imperfect monitoring, Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Vol. 32 (1), 1997. (Journal Article)
We consider a regulator's choice between environmentally motivated emissions taxes and output taxes. We investigate how the optimal instrument depends on the monitoring cost function, the firm's technology, and on social preferences regarding output and environmental quality. Pure emissions taxes are usually not optimal with monitoring costs. Pure output taxes are optimal under sufficiently high monitoring costs, sufficiently limited options for emission reduction by means other than output reduction, and sufficiently high substitutability of the output. Finally, conditions for the optimality of mixed taxes are given. |
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Josef Falkinger, Efficient private provision of public goods when by rewarding deviations from average, Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 62 (3), 1996. (Journal Article)
This paper proposes the following incentive scheme for the private provision of public goods: government should reward and penalize deviations from the mean contribution by an appropriate factor. This makes efficient contribution individually rational even if individuals see through the government budget constraint. |
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Rafał LatałA, Marek Pycia, Marek G Pycia, On the volume of convex hulls of sets on spheres, Geometriae Dedicata, Vol. 63 (2), 1996. (Journal Article)
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Janusz Matkowski, Marek Pycia, Marek G Pycia, Positive homogeneous functionals related to LP-norms, Journal of Mathematical Analysis and Applications, Vol. 200 (1), 1996. (Journal Article)
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Peter Zweifel, Wolfram Strüwe, Long-term care insurance and bequests as instruments for shaping intergenerational relationships, Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Vol. 12 (1), 1996. (Journal Article)
The growing demand for long-term care (LTC) causes the relationship between children and their parents to gain increased importance for society. Parents may create incentives for children to provide LTC through bequests, or they may purchase LTC insurance. While these instruments have been analyzed separately in the literature, this article shows that optimal LTC insurance must be small in the presence of bequests. Thus, the failure of private LTC insurance to diffuse into middle-class households may be explained by the fact that the bequest instrument is fully available to the current generation of parents, who for the first time since 1914 are in a position to bequeath an intact stock of capital in major industrialized countries. |
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Rainer Winkelmann, Unskilled labor and wage determination: an empirical investigation for Germany, Journal of Population Economics, Vol. 9 (2), 1996. (Journal Article)
This article contributes to the ongoing debate on native wage impacts of immigration. I propose a mobile-fixed factor distinction as a framework in which to think about the differential impact of immigration on various labor market groups. Skilled workers are treated as a fixed factor of production since the strong reliance on skill certification in Germany inhibits mobility and shelters from competition. Unskilled workers, in contrast, receive competitive wages. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984–1989 I estimate panel wage regressions for groups of workers separated by skill certification. I find that university graduates‘ wages increase, and the wages of workers without postsecondary degree decrease, as the industry share of unskilled workers increases. The effect for apprentices is ambiguous. |
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Rainer Winkelmann, Markov Chain Monte Carlo analysis of underreported count data with an application to worker absenteeism, Empirical Economics, Vol. 21 (4), 1996. (Journal Article)
A new approach for modeling under-reported Poisson counts is developed. The parameters of the model are estimated by Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation. An application to workers absenteeism data from the German Socio-Economic Panel illustrates the fruitfulness of the approach. Worker absenteeism and the level of pay are unrelated, but absence rates increase with firm size. |
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Rainer Winkelmann, Employment Prospects and Skill Acquisition of Apprenticeship-Trained Workers in Germany, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, Vol. 49 (4), 1996. (Journal Article)
Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984-90, the author analyzes the entrance of young individuals into the German labor market, comparing the experience of apprenticeship graduates to that of graduates from universities, full-time vocational schools, and secondary schools. Apprentices experienced fewer unemployment spells in the transition to their first full-time employment than did non-apprentices. Among apprentices, those trained in large firms had the smoothest transition to employment; once employed, however, apprentices (whether they stayed in their training firm or not) and non-apprentices had similar job stability (as measured by tenure). An estimated 70% of apprenticeship trainees left their training firm within a five-year period. These findings are consistent with the view that apprenticeship training develops general, portable skills rather than firm-specific skills |
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Jacob Goeree, Liu Shuangzhe, Neudecker Heinz, Solutions: An Inequality Involving Submatrices, Econometric Theory, Vol. 12 (02), 1996. (Journal Article)
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