Plant-level employment development before collective displacements: comparing mass layoffs,plant closures and bankruptcies

This article analyzes the development of employment levels and worker flows before bankruptcies, plant closure without bankruptcies and mass layoffs. Utilizing administrative plant-level data for Germany, we find no systematic employment reductions prior to mass layoffs, a strong and long-lasting reduction prior to closures, and a much shorter shadow of death preceding bankruptcies. Employment reductions in closing plants, in contrast to bankruptcies and mass layoffs, do not come along with increased worker flows. These patterns point to an intended and controlled shrinking strategy for closures without bankruptcy and to an unintended collapse for bankruptcies and mass layoffs.     

MULTIATTRIBUTE UTILITY THEORY,INTERTEMPORAL UTILITY,AND CORRELATION AVERSION

Convenient assumptions about qualitative properties of the intertemporal utility function have generated counterintuitive implications for the relationship between atemporal risk aversion and the intertemporal elasticity of substitution. If the intertemporal utility function is additively separable, then the latter two concepts are the inverse of each other. We review a theoretical specification with a long lineage in the literature on multi‐attribute utility and use this theoretical structure to guide the design of a series of experiments that allow us to identify and estimate intertemporal correlation aversion. Our results show that subjects are correlation averse over lotteries with intertemporal income profiles.     

Common stock returns in the pre-WWI Berlin Stock Exchange

We provide new evidence on the efficiency of the Berlin Stock Exchange prior to World War I, when it ranked among the top few markets worldwide by market capitalization. Using a new set of monthly stock price data for a random sample of German companies between 1904 and 1910, we estimate a typical three-factor model and find that returns relate positively to risk (beta), but that book-to-market ratios enter as well (negatively). Firm size and earnings/price ratio relate positively but weakly to returns. The results indicate that the Berlin market did not suffer from unusually large pricing anomalies; thus, its performance was not substantially different from modern markets. Also supporting the conclusion of market efficiency, a momentum portfolio earns returns not different from zero, on average.     

Economic preferences and trade outcomes

Review of World Economics - Integrating the Global Preference Survey (GPS) and its data of unique scope on national preference structures in patience, risk attitude and reciprocity into a gravity...     

Minimum wages in an automating economy

We explore the suitability of the minimum wage as a policy instrument for reducing emerging income inequality created by new technologies. For this, we implement a binding minimum wage in a task-based framework, in which tasks are conducted by machines, low-skill, and high-skill workers. In this framework, an increasing minimum wage reduces the inequality between the low-skill wage and the other factor prices, whereas the share of income of low-skill workers in the national income is nonincreasing. Then, we analyze the impact of an automating economy along the extensive and intensive margins. In a setting with a minimum wage, it can be shown that automation at the extensive margin and the creation of new, labor-intensive tasks do not increase the aggregate output in general, as the displacement of low-skill workers counteracts the positive effects of cost-savings. Finally, we highlight a potential trade-off between less inequality of the factor prices and greater inequality of the income distribution when a minimum wage is introduced into an automating economy.     

Special issue: 20th anniversary of the Portuguese Economic Journal. Editors’ introduction

Portuguese Economic Journal -     

城市荒野景观及其营造策略：以荷兰 实践为例

在国际范围内荒野保护运动持续发展的同时，中国 的荒野保护体系正在稳步建立。但随着城市化进程的不断加 速，城市中自然荒野空间的开发是不可避免的。如何在不断扩 张的城市范围内尽可能保留与规划荒野景观，已经成为国内风 景园林设计师关注的问题。在梳理了城市荒野课题相关背景和 研究进展后，探索了荷兰的城市荒野实践经验，并选取3个不 同尺度和类型的代表性案例，分别对案例的项目背景、设计要 点和场地功能进行研究分析，进而提出自然优先、野性保护、 控制扰动和公众参与4点原则，并辩证地提取了可指导中国背 景下不同尺度城市荒野景观营造的策略，为构建中国荒野体系 提供了国际经验。