Bruno Frey, Give your workers something to smile about, IESE insight, Vol. 4, 2010. (Journal Article)
Economics is undergoing a remarkable new development, which may even be called revolutionary. This development is likely to change economics substantially in the future. New insights from happiness research are slowly being accepted in standard economics, a field which is traditionally conservative. If the goal of most human beings is to be happy, then a fuller understanding of which factors contribute to well-being is critical, especially if recent findings on what determines happiness are at variance with standard economic theories. Happiness research is even more important in helping to determine which institutional forms best enable individuals to increase their life satisfaction. |
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Sandra Hanslin, Globalization and the public sector, University of Zurich, Faculty of Economics, Business Administration and Information Technology, 2010. (Dissertation)
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Bruno Frey, Glück – eine ökonomische Sicht, io new management, Vol. 1006, 2010. (Journal Article)
Wie glücklich Menschen sich fühlen, wird mit Hilfe von repräsentativen Umfragen erfasst. Wichtigste Determinanten sind gute Gesundheit und soziale Beziehungen. Personen mit höherem Einkommen fühlen sich glücklicher. Allerdings führt eine Einkommenssteigerung nur vor- übergehend zu mehr Lebenszufriedenheit; Menschen gewöhnen sich an ein höheres Einkommen und vergleichen sich mit besser gestellten Personen. In Demokratien sind die Menschen glücklicher. Die Regierung muss die Voraussetzungen um glücklich zu sein schaffen, nicht jedoch die Menschen zu ihrem Glück zwingen. |
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Bruno Frey, Claudia Frey Marti, Glück: Die Sicht der Ökonomie, Rüegger Verlag, Zürich, 2010. (Book/Research Monograph)
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Bruno Frey, Alois Stutzer, Glück: Die ökonomische Analyse, In: Sozialpsychologie und Ökonomie, Pabst Science Publ., Lengerich, p. 75 - 93, 2010. (Book Chapter)
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Bruno Frey, Alois Stutzer, Happiness and public choice, Public Choice, Vol. 144 (3-4), 2010. (Journal Article)
Measuring individual welfare using data on reported subjective well-being has made great progress. It offers a new way of confronting public choice hypotheses with field
data, e.g. with respect to partisan preferences on unemployment and inflation or rents in the public bureaucracy. Insights from public choice also help to assess the role of happiness measures in public policy. We emphasize that maximizing aggregate happiness as a social
welfare function neglects incentive problems and political institutions while citizens are reduced to metric stations. The goal of happiness research should be to improve the nature of the processes through which individuals can express their preferences. |
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Jacob Goeree, Charles A Holt, Hierarchical package bidding: a paper & pencil combinatorial auction, Games and Economic Behavior, Vol. 70 (1), 2010. (Journal Article)
We introduce a new combinatorial auction format based on a simple, transparent pricing mechanism tailored for the hierarchical package structure proposed by Rothkopf, Peke~c, and Harstad (1998) to avoid computational complexity. This combination provides the feedback necessary for bidders in multi-round auctions to discern winning bidding strategies for subsequent rounds and to coordinate responses to aggressive package bids. The resulting mechanism is compared to two leading alternatives in a series of laboratory experiments involving varying degrees of value synergies. Based on these 'wind tunnel' tests the FCC has decided to use hierarchical package bidding in the major upcoming 700MHz auction. |
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Beat Hotz-Hart, Hochschullandschaft Schweiz II. Gestern, heute, morgen, In: Wirtschaftspolitik nach der Krise Tagungsband zur Gerzensee-Konferenz vom 19. und 20. November 2009, Avenir Suisse, Bern, p. 137 - 147, 2010. (Book Chapter)
Die Steuerung der Hochschullandschaft der Schweiz und vorab die Rolle des Bundes soll
grundsätzlich reformiert werden. Ausgehend vom hochschulpolitischen Konzept der 1990er
Jahre werden Trends und damit verbundener Wandel in Lehre und Forschung beschrieben.
Dies führt zu Herausforderungen einer künftigen hochschulpolitischen Steuerung. Vor diesem
Hintergrund wird das Konzept des vorliegenden neuen Bundesgesetzes über die Förderung
der Hochschulen und die Koordination im schweizerischen Hochschulbereich (HFKG) skizziert
und werden Schwierigkeiten für dessen Verabschiedung, in Kraft Setzung und Umsetzung
diskutiert. |
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Mathias Hoffmann, How Europe should harness market forces to deal with sovereign credit risk, Vox, 2010. (Journal Article)
If a European Monetary Fund does happen, how would it work? This column proposes a European Sovereign Insurance Scheme to sell bond insurance on EMU members' sovereign debt. In good times the insurance fees would allow the EMF to build up a capital cushion. In bad times, the EMF could use these funds to facilitate an orderly unwinding of the default – while imposing tough conditions. |
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Björn Bartling, Andreas Park, How syndicate short sales affect the informational efficiency of IPO prices and underpricing, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 45 (2), 2010. (Journal Article)
When a company goes public, it is standard practice that the underwriting syndicate allocates more shares than are issued. The underwriter thus holds a short position that it commonly fills by aftermarket trading when market prices fall or, when prices rise, by executing the so-called overallotment option. This option is a standard feature of initial public offering (IPO) arrangements that allows the underwriter to purchase more shares from the issuer at the original offer price. We propose a theoretical model to study the implications of this combination of short position and overallotment option on the pricing of the IPO. Maximizing the sum of both the profits from their share of the offer revenue and the potential profits from aftermarket trading, we show that underwriters strategically distort the offer price. This results either in exacerbated underpricing when favorably informed underwriters lower prices to secure a signaling benefit, or in informationally inefficient offer prices when underwriters pool in offer prices irrespective of their information. |
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Joseph P Romano, Azeem M Shaikh, Michael Wolf, Hypothesis testing in econometrics, Annual Review of Economics, Vol. 2 (1), 2010. (Journal Article)
This article reviews important concepts and methods that are useful for hypothesis testing. First, we discuss the Neyman-Pearson framework. Various approaches to optimality are presented, including finite-sample and large-sample optimality. Then, we summarize some of the most important methods, as well as resampling methodology, which is useful to set critical values. Finally, we consider the problem of multiple testing, which has witnessed a burgeoning literature in recent years. Along the way, we incorporate some examples that are current in the econometrics literature. While many problems with well-known successful solutions are included, we also address open problems that are not easily handled with current technology, stemming from such issues as lack of optimality or poor asymptotic approximations. |
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Armin Schmutzler, Is competition good for innovation? A simple approach to an unresolved question, Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics, Vol. 5 (6), 2010. (Journal Article)
The relation between the intensity of competition and R&D investmenthas received a lot of attention, both in the theoretical and in the empirical literature. Nevertheless, no consensus on the sign of the effect of competition on innovation has emerged. This survey of the literature identifies sources of confusion in the theoretical debate. My discussion is mainly based on a unified model that simplifies the comparison of different results. This model is also applied to show which factors work in favor of a positive relation between competition and innovation. |
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Tobias Straumann, Krisenerfahrung und Deutungsmacht: Die Währungspolitik Schwedens und der Schweiz im 20. Jahrhundert, In: Die kulturelle Seite der Währung: europäische Währungskulturen, Geldwerterfahrungen und Notenbanksysteme im 20. Jahrhundert, R. Oldenbourg, München, p. 199 - 223, 2010. (Book Chapter)
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Bruno Frey, Kunst und Glück, In: Press Art: Sammlung Annette und Peter Nobel, Stämpfli Verlag, Bern, p. 60 - 61, 2010. (Book Chapter)
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Regula Julia Leemann, Stefan Boes, Sandra Da Rin, La perte plus que proportionelle des femmes dans les parcours académiques. Quelques résultats quant aux caractéristiques sociales du champ scientifique et à ses processus genrés d'exclusion, In: Le plafond de fer de l'université : Femmes et carrières, Seismo, Zürich, p. 127 - 153, 2010. (Book Chapter)
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Fabian Waltert, Felix Schläpfer, Landscape amenities and local development: a review of migration, regional economic and hedonic pricing studies, Ecological Economics, Vol. 70 (2), 2010. (Journal Article)
With rapid urban expansion and loss of open space, attractive local landscapes will continue to gain
importance in location decisions and on political agendas. The present study reviews the evidence on the local economic role of landscape amenities from two major strands of empirical research, migration and regional economic models, and hedonic pricing models. Following common amenity definitions we identify 71 relevant peer-reviewed studies and systematically assess the reported effects of the landscape amenity variables. The migration and regional economic studies suggest that migrants are attracted by amenities nearly as often as by low taxes. Reported effects of amenities on income and employment are less consistent.
The hedonic studies suggest that nature reserves and land cover diversity have mostly, open space and forest often, and agricultural land rarely positive effects on housing prices. Studies at larger geographic scales and studies involving urban areas were more likely to identify significant amenity effects. Some limitations of the
evidence may be overcome with better datasets and modeling approaches. However, in line with other recent work, the limitations also highlight the need for complementary information from the analysis of political preferences for land-use management. |
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B Figner, D Knoch, E J Johnson, A R Krosch, S H Lisanby, Ernst Fehr, E U Weber, Lateral prefrontal cortex and self-control in intertemporal choice, Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 13 (5), 2010. (Journal Article)
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Bruno Frey, Lin Ostrom’s contribution to economics: a personal evaluation, Public Choice, Vol. 143 (3-4), 2010. (Journal Article)
Lin Ostrom’s work constitutes a great step forward in the analysis of social governance. Instead of focusing on the technical characteristics of goods she studies what types of institutions have emerged and how they affect individual motivation and behavior in public goods and commons situations. Her approach represents a careful analysis of institutions often emerging from below. Unorthodox impacts of institutions on individual motivation and behavior as well as the possible creation of new institutions must be taken into account. The constitution must ensure that the involved individuals can establish adequate institutions regardless of possible opposition by politicians and bureaucrats. |
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Bruno Frey, Claudia Frey Marti, Macht Föderalismus glücklich?, Die Politik, Vol. 5, 2010. (Journal Article)
In einer repräsentativen Umfrage bezeichnet sich gut die Hälfte der befragten Schweizer und Schweizerinnen als glücklich und mehr als ein Drittel sogar als sehr glücklich. Befragte in Deutschland oder den USA geben ein vergleichsweise tieferes Glücks- beziehungsweise Lebenszufriedenheitsniveau an. Wovon hängt aber unser Glück ab? |
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D Gärtner, Monopolistic screening under learning by doing, RAND Journal of Economics, Vol. 41 (3), 2010. (Journal Article)
This article investigates the design of incentives in a dynamic adverse selection framework where agents' production technologies display learning effects and agents' learning rates are private knowledge. In a simple two-period model with full commitment available to the principal, we show that whether learning effects are over- or underexploited crucially depends on whether more efficient agents also learn faster (so costs diverge through learning effects) or whether it is the less efficient agents who learn faster (so costs converge). We further show that an overexploitation of learning effects can occur also if the full-commitment assumption is relaxed. |
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