Öffentliche Güter mit Versicherungscharakter

Dikes as well as early warning systems against natural disasters are just two examples for pure public goods that serve as an insurance device. Dikes reduce the probability of a loss caused by flooding. Such public goods can be seen as public self-protection. By contrast, early warning systems do not reduce the probability of a loss, but the size of a loss. Hence, such public goods can be seen as public self-insurance. The present paper presents a model which takes these characteristics into account. Conditions for the efficient provision of such public goods are derived. Moreover, we analyze the consequences of a change in income and risk aversion towards the efficient provision level as well as the interaction with private market insurance.     

Quality-adjusted price indexes for portable computers

The aim of this article is to identify the variables affecting the decision to make contributions to personal pension plans and the amount of such contributions. For this purpose, we specify and estimate a Tobit model for a sample based on the 1995 Personal Income Taxpayers Panel prepared by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finance) formed by 3041 taxpayers, of whom 358 made contributions to pension plans. Our results suggest that individuals decide to invest in pension plans on complex grounds combining the wish to benefit from tax savings and to ensure they will receive supplementary income upon retirement.     

Self‐Insurance and Self‐Protection as Public Goods

Many public goods provide utility by insuring against hazardous events. Those public goods can have self‐insurance and self‐protection character. For both situations we analyze the efficient public provision level and the provision level resulting from Nash behavior in a private provision game. We consider the interaction of public goods as insurance devices with market insurance. The availability of market insurance reduces the provision level of the public good for both public and private provision, regardless of whether we consider self‐insurance or self‐protection. Moreover, we show that Nash behavior has always a larger impact than the availability of market insurance.     

Does family employment enhance MSEs performance?: Integrating socioemotional wealth and family embeddedness perspectives

This paper analyzes the effect of family employment on performance in micro and small enterprises (MSEs) by combining two research perspectives that, until now, have been conducted separately: the family embeddedness perspective of entrepreneurship (Aldrich and Cliff, 2003) and the socioemotional wealth (SEW) approach to family business (Gomez-Mejia et al 2007). Our integrated perspective allows us to highlight how the nature of the employment relationships in MSEs enhances the benefits derived from the socioemotional endowment associated with family labor, and reduces the opportunity costs of employing relatives. Moreover, we assert that this relationship is moderated by specific family characteristics that determine the firm's ability to preserve the SEW, while at the same time pursuing financial goals. Our results provide partial support to the enhancing role of family labour on MSEs performance: employing family members increases sales but decreases profitability as measured by ROA. This effect also results in improved performance for women-led firms and for firms that have received family funding, but impairs MSEs performance when the business is the main source of the owner´s household income.     

Populism and the return of the “Paranoid Style”: Some evidence and a simple model of demand for incompetence as insurance against elite betrayal

We present a simple model of populism as the rejection of “disloyal” leaders. We show that adding the assumption that people are worse off when they experience low income as a result of leader betrayal (than when it is the result of bad luck) to a simple voter choice model yields a preference for incompetent leaders even if all leaders have the same underlying probability of betrayal. These deliver worse material outcomes in general, but they reduce the feelings of betrayal during bad times. Some evidence consistent with our model is gathered from the Trump–Clinton 2016 election: on average, subjects primed with the importance of competence in policymaking decrease their support for Trump, the candidate who scores lower on competence in our survey (even amongst Trump supporters). But two groups respond to the treatment with a large (approximately 5 percentage points) increase in their support for Donald Trump: those living in rural areas and those that are low educated, white and living in urban and suburban areas.     

Identity and environmentalism: the influence of community characteristics

This paper examines the influence of community characteristics on self-proclaimed environmentalism. We find that the composition of a community affects the likelihood that a person claims to be a strong environmentalist even after controlling for individual political leaning, socio-economic characteristics, and pro-environment behaviors. Individuals are more likely to claim to be strong environmentalists if they live in areas where a larger share of the population has post-graduate degrees, if they live in heavily Democratic areas, or if they live in heavily Republican areas. These community effects occur only when individuals are predisposed to take on an environmental identity.     

Profit Margins in Mexico's Manufacturing Industry: an Econometric Study

Prices, wages and profit margins in Mexico have varied considerably. The purpose of this study is to analyze the evolution of profit margins in the Mexican manufacturing industry during the last two decades and to provide an explanation for the changes. The econometric study shows that surges in the exchange rate provoke increases in prices, both because imported input costs rise and because pressures from foreign competition are relaxed when domestic prices of imported goods rise. A second factor influencing margins is trade openness. Third, the level of profit margins also depends positively on the level of labor costs. An increase in labor costs tends to be passed along in a more than proportional manner to prices. Finally, an increase in interest rates seems to stimulate increases in profit margins, at least in some manufacturing divisions.     

Effect of ownership structure on underinvestment and overinvestment: empirical evidence from Spain

This paper investigates how ownership affects the investment‐cash flow sensitivity by taking into account the non‐linearities of ownership with respect to firm value, and using a free cash flow index and a criterion for financial constraints to disentangle underinvestment and overinvestment. Interesting results are provided by estimating using the Generalized Method of Moments to eliminate the endogeneity problem. The alignment of interests between owners and managers and the monitoring by concentrated ownership both alleviate the sensitivity of investment to cash flow both in underinvestor and overinvestor firms. However, in the presence of controlling owners, underinvestment and overinvestment are exacerbated.     

The role of multivariate skew-Student density in the estimation of stock market crashes

By combining the multivariate skew-Student density with a time-varying correlation GARCH (TVC-GARCH) model, this paper investigates the spread of crashes in the regional stock markets. The regional index series of European, USA, Latin American and Asian markets are modeled jointly, and the maximum likelihood estimates show that a TVC-GARCH model with multivariate skew-Student density outperforms that with multivariate normal density substantially. Depending on the past information set, the conditional 1-day crash probabilities are computed, and the forecast performances of the TVC-GARCH model with both multivariate skew-Student and normal densities are evaluated. In both bilateral and global environments, multivariate skew-Student density has better predictive accuracy than normal density. In global crash probability forecasts, multivariate skew-Student density attains much higher hit rate and Kuipers score than multivariate normal density, thus it can be used to improve early-warning systems.