External refereed essays

Zur Ökonomik grundfinanzierter wirtschafts- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Forschung

Mit Argumenten aus der "Theorie des Marktversagens" und der "Neuen Politischen Ökonomie" kann gezeigt werden, daß Universitäten und Forschungsinstitute spezielle "Öffentliche Güter" produzieren, die eine Grundfinanzierung durch den Staat unter Effizienzgesichtspunkten rechtfertigen. Allerdings wäre die Produktion solcher wirtschafts- und sozialwissenschaftlicher Forschungsergebnisse durch einen einzigen ...

Coordination Failure with Multiple-Source Lending: The Cost of Protection against a Powerful Lender

We analyze how a firm might protect quasirents in an environment of imperfect capital markets, where switching lenders is costly to the borrower, and contracts are incomplete. As switching costs make the firm vulnerable to ex post exploitation, it may want to diversify lending. Multiple-source lending, however, suffers from coordination failure. An uncoordinated withdrawal of funds will force a financially ...

Sport as a Common Property Resource: A Solution to the Dilemmas of Doping

The use of drugs in high-performance sports (doping) is a common pool resource (CPR) dilemma: regardless of the number of other athletes who dope, the athlete with strong tastes for victory will find doping optimal; yet if all athletes dope, they all bear negative health consequences, although each one's odds of victory are not greatly changed. The current regulatory approach relies entirely on centralized ...

Jurisdiction Size, Political Participation, and the Allocation of Resources

This paper analyzes the effect of population size on politicalparticipation and allocative efficiency. Increasing populationis generally found to reduce political participation. However,since participation is not evenly spread throughout thepopulation, this will have consequences for allocation.Namely, we argue that increasing population size shifts powerto the rich. We discuss the consequences for ...

Restructuring Know-How and Collateral

Tax Liability-Side Equivalence in Experimental Posted-Offer Markets

In theory, the incidence of a tax should be independent of the side of the market on which it is levied. This principle of liability-side equivalence underlies virtually all theories of tax incidence. Policy discussions, however, tend to place great emphasis on the legal division of tax payments. We use computerized experimental posted-offer markets to test liability-side equivalence. We find that ...

Post-Soviet Gas Sector Restructuring in the CIS: a Political Economy Approach

This paper analyses progress and obstacles to gas sector reform in the most important CIS-countries (Russia, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan), taking a political economy perspective. This reform process is embedded in a very specific post-Soviet institutional framework stemming from the legacy of socialism. Firstly, we review the evolution of the gas sector for the period 1992-1998. The paper then ...

Understanding and Managing Leakage in Forest-Based Greenhouse-Gas-Mitigation Projects

A major concern about land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) projects under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is the potential for leakage. Leakage refers to a net increase of greenhouse-gas emissions in an area outside the project resulting from the CDM activity. This paper provides an overview of leakage, its definitions and its causes. It describes ways that LULUCF projects may suffer ...

The Contribution of Local Public Infrastructure to Private Productivity and Its Political Economy: Evidence from a Panel of Large German Cities

This paper proposes a simultaneous-equation approach to theestimation of the contribution of infrastructure accumulationto private production. A political economy model for theallocation of public infrastructure investment grants isformulated. Our empirical findings, using a panel of largeGerman cities for the years 1980,1986, and 1988, suggest thatcities ruled by a council sharing the State (`Bundesland')government's ...

Export Intermediation: An Empirical Test of Peng and Ilinitch

This paper provides empirical evidence from France on the role of export intermediary firms. Using data from 20,000 French firms, this paper tests two of the five transaction cost-based propositions on the role of export intermediaries by Peng and Ilinitch (1998). While the empirical evidence only partially supports their first proposition on distance and familiarity, their second proposition on product ...

Do the Russians Really Save that Much? Alternative Estimates from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey

We use a new independent survey of 4000 Russian households (the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey or RLMS) to study their saving behavior. The RLMS household saving rate (12%) is less than half the official figure (29%). Despite the massive changes of the transition, the Russian household saving rate of 1994 cannot be shown to be different from that of 1976. The patterns of Russian household saving ...

Regional Infrastructure Policy and its Impact on Productivity: A Comparison of Germany and France

This paper describes the different institutional frameworks for infrastructure policy in Germany and France. The economic effects of infrastructure are estimated econometrically for German and French regions. We find evidence that regional road infrastructure has a significant impact on regional output. Moreover, we find evidence that for Germany the priority of promoting equal living conditions throughout ...

What Infrastructure Policies for Post-Socialist Eastern Europe? Lessons from the Public Investment Programmes (PIP) in the Baltic Countries

Neuere Erkenntnisse zur Bedeutung von FuE-Kooperationen industrieller Unternehmen: ein Literaturüberblick

Does Germany Have the 'World's Highest Wage Costs'?

The (Pseudo-) Liberalisation of Russia's Power Sector: The Hidden Rationality of Transformation

This paper discusses the problems of adjustment of the Russian power sector to the challenges for building up a new institutional structure according to political and market requirements and uncovers the reasons why the implementation of a pool regulation model initiated in 1992 was not successful. It identifies the purely formal nature of implementation of the model as well as demonetarisation and ...

Pflegebedürftige Personen im Haushalt und das Erwerbsverhalten verheirateter Frauen

Im vorliegenden Beitrag werden die Auswirkungen von pflegebedürftigen Personen im Haushalt auf das Erwerbsverhalten verheirateter Frauen im Alter von 40 bis 65 Jahren untersucht. Als Datengrundlage dient das Sozio- oekonomische Panel. Die empirischen Ergebnisse der Längsschnittanalyse unterstützen die These, dass verheiratete Frauen bei Anwesenheit eines Pflegefalls im Haushalt eine erhöhte Neigung ...

Strategic Technology Alliances: A Way to Innovative Enterprises in Russia?

This article examines whether, how, and to what extent international technology partnerships of Russian enterprises and research institutes contribute to their technological capability building. It presents results obtained by analysis of both a unique survey of Russian enterprises and research institutes co-operating with Western partners in seven selected high-technology fields and four Russian regions ...

Reconsidering Money: Monetary Exchange with Additive Transaction Costs

Under the assumption of purely additive transaction costs in exchange, the literature on money has a standard example of direct exchange dominating indirect (monetary) exchange. From here, it is frequently concluded that subadditive costs (e. g., search costs) must be examined in order to explain the institution or origin of money. In contrast, this paper presents an additive transaction costs model ...

The End of Transition: An Institutional Interpretation of Energy Sector Reform in Eastern Europe and the CIS

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the growing institutional divergence of systemic transformation in the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Based upon the institutional theory of economic and legal systemic change, we empirically analyse reforms in a sector where the transformation process proved to be particularly tough: the energy sector. We test to what extent reforms ...