Contributions in Merlin

This paper investigates the determinants of inter-firm cooperation in research and development (R&D). We analyse the impact of structural and firm specific characteristics, market performance, access to resources and managerial techniques on different types of inter-firm R&D cooperation. Based on a survey of 886 enterprises in manufacturing and industry/business-related services located in Germany, we estimate several models with different types of R&D partnerships as a dependent variable to find out which types of enterprises are more or less likely to form or join either type of R&D partnership. The findings suggest that the availability and the quality of a firm’s own R&D resources are common factors driving R&D cooperation in general. Differentiating between cooperation activities in R&D among enterprises on the same production level on the one hand and vertical cooperation between enterprises and suppliers/customers or cross-sector alliances between enterprises and public research institutes on the other hand, we find cooperation type specific determinants of entry. The size of a firm, its location, access to financial resources and network experience seem to be most important.

Neue digitale Vervielfältigungstechnologien und Piraterie auf dem Tonträgermarkt stellen die Musikindustrie vor eine ernstzunehmende Herausforderung. Im bislang wichtigsten Geschäftsfeld, dem Verkauf von bespielten Tonträgern, sind die Umsatzzahlen seit Jahren rückläufig. Auf der anderen Seite werden stetig steigende Umsätze aus dem Verkauf von Konzerttickets, Merchandising-Artikeln oder Klingeltönen erwirtschaftet. Die Erzielung dieser „Umwegerträge“ setzt eine Bekanntheit von Musikkünstlern voraus, die durch Piraterie tendenziell positiv beeinflusst wird. Je mehr (legale oder illegale) Tonträger im Umlauf sind, desto größer ist die Nachfrage nach komplementären Gütern und Dienstleistungen. Der Beitrag untersucht verschiedene neue Geschäftsmodelle, die Musikproduzenten eine Teilhabe an den Umwegerträgen ermöglichen. Die gezielte Produktion von Boy- und Girl-Groups, die Verpflichtung von Schauspielern und anderen Künstlern als Sänger oder TV-Casting-Formate, bei denen die aufwendige Suche und Auswahl von Musikkünstlern im Fernsehen inszeniert wird, lassen sich damit als Reaktion der Branche auf Piraterie interpretieren.

We examine vertical backward integration in a reduced-form model of successive oligopolies. Our key findings are: (i) There may be asymmetric equilibria where some firms integrate and others remain separated, even if firms are symmetric initially; (ii) Efficient firms are more likely to integrate vertically. As a result, integrated firms also tend to have a large market share. The driving force behind these findings are demand/mark-up complementarities in the product market. We also identify countervailing forces resulting from strong vertical foreclosure, upstream sales and endogenous acquisition costs.

This paper argues that an unequal distribution of political power, biased to landed elites and owners of natural resources, in combination with openness to trade is a major obstacle to development of natural resource- or land-abundant economies. We develop a two-sector general equilibrium model and show that in an oligarchic society public investments conducive to industrialization - schooling for example - are typically lower in an open than in a closed economy. Moreover, we find that, under openness to trade, development is faster in a democratic system. We also endogenize the trade regime and demonstrate that in a land-abundant economy the landed elite has an interest to support openness to trade. We present historical evidence for Southern economies in the Americas that is consistent with our theoretical results: resistance of landed elites to mass education, comparative advantages in primary goods production in the 19th century globalization wave, and low primary school enrollment and literacy rates.

Under certain cost conditions the optimal insurance policy offers full coverage above a deductible, as Arrow and others have shown. However, many insurance policies currently provide coverage against several losses although the possibilities for the insured to affect the loss probabilities by several prevention activities (multiple moral hazard) are substantially different. This article shows that optimal contracts under multiple moral hazard generally call for complex reimbursement schedules. It also examines the conditions under which different types of risks can optimally be covered by a single insurance policy and argues that the case for umbrella policies under multiple moral hazard is limited in practice.

This paper argues that endogenous restructuring processes within firms towards analytical and interactive non-routine tasks (like problem-solving and organizational activities, respectively), triggered by advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) and rising supply of educated workers, are associated with an increase of wage inequality within education groups. We show that this may be accompanied by a decline or stagnation of between-group wage dispersion. The mechanisms proposed in this research are not only consistent with the evolution of the distribution of wages in advanced countries, but also with the evolution of task composition in firms and a frequently confirmed complementarity between skill-upgrading, new technologies and knowledge-based work organization.

The previous literature on the determinants of individual well-being has failed to fully account for the interdependencies in well-being at the family level. This paper develops an ordered probit model with multiple random effects that allows to identify the intra-family correlation in wellbeing. The parameters of the model can be estimated with panel data using Maximum Marginal Likelihood. The approach is illustrated in an application using data for the period 1984-1997 from the German Socio-Economic Panel in which both inter-generational and intra-marriage correlations in well-being are estimated.