An international agreement with full participation to tackle the stock of greenhouse gases

Greenhouse gas emissions build up an atmospheric stock which depreciates over time. We identify weakly renegotiation-proof equilibria with full participation in a game of international emission reduction. Treaties are easier to reach for long-lived than for short-lived gases.     

A dynamic spatial panel data approach to the German wage curve

A wage curve is a decreasing function of wages on the regional unemployment rate. Most empirical studies on the wage curve ignore possible spatial interaction effects between the regions which are the primary units of research. This paper reconsiders the western German wage curve with a special focus on the geography of labour markets. Spillovers between regions are taken into account. The paper tests whether the unemployment rate in the larger surrounding region also affects wages. In addition, agglomeration effects and effects of local monopsony are assessed.The main database is a random sample of 974,179 employees observed over the period 1980-2004 and covering 326 NUTS3 units (districts). This rich data set is used to estimate a dynamic wage curve according to the two-step approach of Bell et al. (2002). In the first step one controls for individual heterogeneity and in the second step one allows for spatial effects of unemployment across regions on wages. We check the sensitivity of this wage elasticity to various spatial weight matrices as well as allowing for the endogeneity of unemployment. We also estimate the wage elasticity for various population groups.     

Communication and Cooperation: A Methodological Study

We study the effect of communication in an experimental game where cooperation is consistent with equilibrium play. We examine two methodological questions which affect many studies of communication in games, particularly those studying the relationship between communication and cooperation in supergames. We show that making it easier for subjects to reach an agreement (by allowing more rounds of communication) does not increase cooperation with a limited message space treatment. Thus, limited message space treatments are not a good substitute for the use of chat. Making the game longer, thereby making the connection between the first period and the continuation game more obvious, also has little impact on cooperation. For both the two‐ and three‐period versions of our game we find substantial amounts of contingent play. This implies that use of a finitely repeated game, which has a number of methodological advantages, maintains the main properties of the underlying supergame.     

Cooperation and specialization in German technology regions

In this paper we focus on the technological knowledge of a region and the pattern of cooperative behavior of the innovative actors within that region as a means of transferring this knowledge. In particular, we are concerned with the relationship between the kind and level of knowledge and/or the degree of specialization within a region, the propensity to cooperate and the kind of cooperation. Based on a theoretical discussion of research cooperation we derive appropriate hypotheses and provide an econometric analysis based on data of co-patenting. We find that technologically moderately specialized regions show the highest number of research cooperations, and the higher a regions specialization, the more cooperations take place with partners inside that region.JEL Classification: L29, O31, R12We thank Jens J. Krüger, Michel Quéré, Cees van Beers, Henry Overman and participants of the ZEW Summer Workshop on Innovation, Location and European Integration in Mannheim as well as two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and suggestions.     

Geroski's Stylized Facts and Mobility of Large German Manufacturing Firms

Paul Geroski has established two stylized facts with respect to theprevalence of differential changes (mobility) of indicators ofeconomic and technological performance: technologicalindicators show a larger amount of mobility than do economic indicators.We assess the two stylized facts for a sample of 392 large Germanfirms observed over the period 1981–1993 and assigned to elevenmanufacturing industries. We analyze these data with two novelmethods, Salter curves and mobility indices based on fractileMarkov chains. Our analysis supports Geroski's two stylized factsin the case of large German manufacturing firms taking account ofsectoral differences.     

Firm survival in the German automobile industry

In this paper, methods of duration analysis are applied to investigate determinants of firm survival in the German automobile industry during the period 1886–1939. A new comprehensive data set has been assembled in order to secure data comparable to that for the US automobile industry. Our results show that the forces shaping the survival pattern of firms over the life cycle are quite similar in both countries, i.e. early entry in the life cycle and prior experience are associated with a lower risk of exit. This finding holds equally when parametric, semiparametric and nonparametric methods are applied.We thank the participants of the 10th conference of the International Schumpeter Society in Milan, June 2004, and the 31st EARIE conference in Berlin, September 2004, for helpful discussion. We also thank two anonymous referees for their comments. All remaining errors are in our responsibility.     

Acknowledgement to referees

Acknowledgement to referees

Acknowledgement to referees