International business standards: The competitive imperative

The global marketplace is a reality, and standards for business behavior should be as well. Isolated laws and sanctions do not allow for a level playing field. We believe that adoption of international business standards would provide a better and truly competitive business environment. Unifying the efforts of multinational businesses would intensify the potential impact and hopefully reduce the need for government mandates. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The Value of Human and Social Capital Investments for the Business Performance of Startups

Small Business Economics - We investigate the manifold posed question: “To what extent does investment in human and social capital, besides the effect of ‘talent’, enhance...     

Baumol's Law and Verdoorn's Regularity

This paper tests the laws of Verdoorn and Baumol for the Netherlands in order to assess whether these laws provide an appropriate framework to interpret developments of output, employment, and wages and prices in the manufacturing industry and the services sector. The empirical evidence is not conclusive with respect to Verdoorn's law, but strongly supportive of Baumol's law.     

Value and exchange in economic theorizing: The contribution of the Freiburg School

The purpose of this contribution is to point out the main characteristics of the research program of the German economist Walter Eucken, the head of the Freiburg or ORDO-school. An exposé of his thoughts will be given on (a) the relation between theory and history, (b) the foundations of economic science (c) his contributions to economic theory, and (d) his contributions to the theory of economic policy. Moreover the relevance of the contribution of the Freiburg School (Eucken) to the theme of this symposium on value and exchange in economic theorizing will get attention.     

Research and development with publicly observable outcomes

This paper studies the simultaneous evolution of costs and research incentives in a model in which two firms research each period by purchasing a draw from a stationary distribution of possible production costs. Research decisions each period are based on the results of previous research which are common knowledge. When research stops a Bertrand pricing game occurs. We give conditions under which the perfect equilibrium of this game involves a race by both firms to reach some endogenously determined critical cost level. The first firm to reach this critical level wins the race, capturing the entire market, and continues to research until a second critical cost level is reached.     

Why Are Mothers Working Longer Hours in Austria than in Germany? A Comparative Microsimulation Analysis*

Labour force participation rates of mothers in Austria and Germany are similar; however, full‐time employment rates are much higher among Austrian mothers. In order to find out to what extent these differences can be attributed to differences in the tax‐transfer system, we perform a comparative microsimulation exercise. After estimating structural labour supply models for both countries, we interchange two important institutional characteristics of the two countries ‐ namely, (i) the definition of the tax unit within the personal income tax and (ii) the parental leave benefit scheme. As our analysis shows, differences in mothers’employment patterns can partly be explained by the different tax systems: while Germany has a system of joint taxation with income splitting for married couples, Austria taxes everyone individually, which leads to lower marginal tax rates for secondary earners than in the German system.