Sorting versus screening: Search frictions and competing mechanisms

In a market where sellers compete by posting trading mechanisms, we allow for a general search technology and show that its features crucially affect the equilibrium mechanism. Price posting prevails when meetings are rival, i.e., when a meeting by one buyer reduces another buyer's meeting probability. Under price posting buyers reveal their type by sorting ex-ante. Only if the meeting technology is sufficiently non-rival, price posting is not an equilibrium. Multiple buyer types then visit the same sellers who screen ex-post through auctions.     

Ad valorem versus unit taxes: monopolistic competition, heterogeneous firms, and intra-industry reallocations

Real-world industries are composed from heterogeneous firms and substantial intra-industry reallocations take place, i.e. high productivity firms squeeze out low productivity firms. Previous tax-tool comparisons have not included these central forces of industry structure. This paper examines a general equilibrium monopolistic competition model with heterogeneous firms and intra-industry reallocations. We show that the welfare superiority of ad valorem over unit taxes under imperfect competition is not only preserved but amplified. The additional difference between the tools arises because unit taxes distort relative prices, which in turn reduces average industry productivity through reallocations (the survival and increased market share of lower productivity firms). Importantly, numerical solutions of the model reveal that the relative welfare loss from using the unit tax increases dramatically in the degree of firm heterogeneity.     

Brand-as-Person versus Brand-as-User: An Anthropomorphic Issue in Tourism-related Self-Congruity Studies

Tourism self-congruity studies use two facets to personify destinations, namely, brand-as-person and brand-as-user. These features have been considered synonymous in previous research, and thus the differences between these facets, which may demonstrate biased congruity, must be investigated. This study uses projective techniques to personify brand-as-person and brand-as-user for two tourist destinations. Both facets are distinct and must not be used interchangeably in tourism-related self-congruity studies.     

One for all and all for one: privatization and Universal Service provision in the postal sector

Universal Service provision has a special role for the public utilities sector in many Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. These public utilities have largely been subject to privatization during the last 3 decades. Efficiency effects of privatization are widely documented while the impacts on the quality and accessibility of the Universal Service are not much examined. By using a unique dataset on privatization for 21 countries over the period 1980–2007 for the postal sector, we are able to show that privatization, in particular formal privatization, has led to a decrease in the quality of the Universal Service.     

The impact of redistributive policies on inequality in OECD countries

Due to behavioural effects triggered by redistributional interventions, it is still an open question whether government policies are able to effectively reduce income inequality. We contribute to this research question by using different country-level data sources to study inequality trends in OECD countries since 1980. We first investigate the development of inequality over time before analysing the question of whether governments can effectively reduce inequality. Different identification strategies, using fixed effects and instrumental variables models, provide some evidence that governments are capable of reducing income inequality despite countervailing behavioural responses. The effect is stronger for social expenditure policies than for progressive taxation.     

Gambling in contests

This paper presents a strategic model of risk-taking behavior in contests. Formally, we analyze an n-player winner-take-all contest in which each player decides when to stop a privately observed Brownian motion with drift. A player whose process reaches zero has to stop. The player with the highest stopping point wins. Unlike the explicit cost for a higher stopping time in a war of attrition, here, higher stopping times are riskier, because players can go bankrupt. We derive a closed-form solution of a Nash equilibrium outcome. In equilibrium, highest expected losses occur at an intermediate negative value of the drift.     

Droht eine Immobilienpreisblase in Deutschland?

Since 2009, real estate prices in Germany have been rising rapidly after a period of stagnation during the Great Recession. This raises the question of whether the recent price increases are fundamentally driven or rather an indication of a real estate bubble in Germany. To tackle this question, we take a look at several real estate demand-side indicators. As real estate bubbles sometimes form in certain sub-segments of the real estate market only, the authors also conduct a disaggregate analysis by looking at different real estate types in Germany’s most important metropolitan areas. In what follows, we investigate the relation of real estate prices and rents and test for explosive behaviour of the price-generating processes. Our findings suggest that the recent upswing in the German real estate market seems to be based on fundamental factors. Except for the sub-segment of flats in some of the metropolitan areas, there is no evidence for price increases being unsustainable.     

Does foreign direct investment transfer technology across borders? New evidence

Based on industry-level data of seventeen OECD countries we examine FDI as a potential channel for knowledge diffusion. We find that FDI-receiving countries benefit strongly from FDI-related knowledge spillovers. We do not find evidence for positive outward-FDI-related technology sourcing effects.