Contributions in Merlin

The theoretical idea of personnel economics is to apply simple economic principles to the field of human resources management. Personnel economics as a research field has grown rapidly since the first text book on “Personnel Economics” was published in 1998. The development is driven by new theoretical insights based on institutional and behavioral economics and new empirical methods and data sets. Those new theoretical insights are very fruitful to analyze reasons and consequences of various human resource management practices, to understand what actually drives and motivates employees, and what causes organisations to be successful or to fail. With the new data sets and econometric methods the theories that have been laid out in personnel economics either many years ago or very recently can now be tested thoroughly. And the evidence produced by the new data and methods is strongly supportive, which is not only reassuring for researchers, but it also suggests that practitioners can actually rely on the ideas because they are born out in the data. So, personnel economics is not only a vivid research field, but also of great value for human resource managers, particularly for those taking strategic HR decisions. The fruitfulness of personnel economics is demonstrated with four examples: training strategies of companies, recruiting in tight labour markets, career incentives, team size and effort, and entrepreneurial signaling towards employees and creditors.

Den Humanressourcen einer Volkswirtschaft kommt im globalen Wettbewerb und mit stetig schnelleren Innovationszyklen eine immer größere Bedeutung im Hinblick auf die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von Nationen und Unternehmen zu. Nationale Bildungseinrichtungen stellen einen wichtigen Faktor zur Schaffung und Erhaltung des erforderlichen Humankapitals dar. Aufgrund der seit vielen Jahren schwierigen öffentlichen Haushaltslage haben die Bildungsbudgets mit den gestiegenen Anforderungen aber kaum Schritt halten können, so dass einer effizienten Verwendung der eingesetzten Mittel eine immer stärkere Beachtung zukommt. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird die Evaluation von Bildungseinrichtungen allgemein und von Schulen und Hochschulen im Besonderen immer wichtiger. Spätestens seit den ersten Ergebnissen der PISA-Studie ist aber auch die Erfordernis von wissenschaftlich untermauerten und ökonometrisch zuverlässigen Evaluationen unübersehbar, damit nicht aus deskriptiven Befunden gezogene vorschnelle Schlussfolgerungen mehr Schaden als Nutzen anrichten. Deshalb hat der bildungsökonomische Ausschuss des Vereins für Socialpolitik sich auf seiner 28. Sitzung der Evaluation von Schulen und Hochschulen aus ökonomischer Perspektive angenommen. Die Beiträge basieren auf Vorträgen der Jahrestagung 2003, die auf Einladung von Prof. Dr. Andrea Schenker-Wicki (organisatorische Vorbereitung) und Prof. Dr. Uschi Backes-Gellner (inhaltliche Vorbereitung) am 27./28.03.2003 an der Universität Zürich stattfand. Alle Texte wurden - wie in den vorhergehenden Jahren auch - einer doppelten Begutachtung und entsprechenden Revisionen unterzogen. Während sich die ersten drei Beiträge auf die Evaluation von Schulleistungen konzentrieren, beschäftigen sich die letzten drei mit der Messung von Lehr- und Forschungsleistungen von Universitäten. Dabei widmen sich die Autoren nicht nur Fragen der Messung von Schul- und Hochschulleistungen, sondern auch den organisatorischen und sozioökonomischen Einflussfaktoren variierender Bildungsleistungen. Außerdem werden die makroökonomischen Konsequenzen variierender Bildungsqualität - insbesondere auch im Vergleich zu rein schüler- oder schuljahresbezogenen Indikatoren - erstmals detailliert empirisch analysiert.

We analyze a macroeconomic model of monopolistic competition in which consumers earn unequal incomes. When preferences are nonhomothetic, the distribution of income affects equilibrium markups and equilibrium product diversity.

In dynamic wage bargaining models it is usually assumed that individual unemployment benefits are a fraction of the average wage level. In most countries, however, unemployment benefits are instead tied to the previous level of individually earned wages. We show how the analysis has to be modified if this fact is taken into account and compare our findings for the wage-setting curve with outcomes under other unemployment compensation schemes. From this comparison it becomes evident how the shape and position of the wage-setting curve depends on the specification of the unemployment benefit system. We also demonstrate that a reduction of unemployment benefits of those who become unemployed after the bargaining period leads to higher equilibrium unemployment.

We investigate how various institutional settings affect a network provider's incentives to invest in infrastructure quality. Under reasonable assumptions on demand, investment incentives turn out to be smaller under vertical separation than under vertical integration, though we also provide counterexamples. The introduction of downstream competition for the market can sometimes improve incentives. With suitable non-linear access prices investment incentives under separation become identical to those under integration.

This paper sets up a model, where multinationals compete in quantities and domestic firms form a competitive fringe. Within this framework, we analyse the relationship between market concentration, international outsourcing and the industry price-cost margin. The empirical results of a panel of 66 industries and the EU12 countries in the 1990s strongly confirm our theoretical hypotheses. Market concentration and international outsourcing are positively related to industry price–cost margins. In a thought experiment, we show that industry price–cost margins would have decreased by 0.4 percentage points more in the 1990s, if international outsourcing had not changed since 1990. In addition, international outsourcing accounts for a convergence in margins across industries in the last decade.

Innovation has become a key element of the economic growth of highly developed countries. Moreover, it is an undisputed fact that Switzerland needs to strengthen its efforts at innovation. This has become clear, among other things in the message of the Federal Council, the Swiss government, which emphasises the promotion of education, research and technology for the years 2004 to 2007. Speedy implementation of technological and scientific potentials into innovative products and services is one of the primordial requirements to be competitive in the marketplace and, hence, to secure jobs. Primarily, this is a challenge to entrepreneurs. It is more demanding to launch into activities with innovative products and services, and greater risks are involved, than in the rationalisation of existing productions. Nevertheless, although entrepreneurial skills and qualities are at the fore with regard to successful innovative processes, the influence of the state with its framework should not be overlooked. It is well worth examining and reconsidering these factors from time to time.Comparing the Swiss innovation system with those of other countries can be a highly profitable exercise.

The existence of semantically tagged Web pages is crucial to bring the Semantic Web to life. But it is still costly to develop and maintain Web applications that offer data and meta-data. Several standard Web engineering methodologies exist for designing and implementing Web applications. In this paper we introduce a technique to extend existing Web engineering techniques to develop semantically tagged Web applications. The novelty of this technique is the definition and implementation of a mapping from XML Schema to ontologies that can be used to automatically generate RDF meta-data from XML content documents.