Lone Mothers: What is to be done?

This Dialogue presents the views of four authors, from the US, the UK, and Norway, on the best policies to help lone mothers. Lone mothers face an inevitable dilemma in allocating their time between earning income and caring for their children. The low-earning capacity of women in an unequal labor market exacerbates the problem, causing material hardship for many lone mothers and their families. The policy solutions proposed lie along a spectrum, ranging from those that seek to enable all lone mothers to take employment to those that aim to let mothers choose whether to take employment or care for their children themselves. Other policies discussed concern ways to value and support caregiving, improve the low-wage labor market for women, and provide a set of income supports that would both boost income and provide time to care for children.     

Insulin-Pens: Können sie mehrfach verwendet werden?

Pen-Papier der DGKH - Der korrekte Umgang mit Insulin-Pens ist offensichtlich nicht ganz einfach. Die Deutsche Gesellschaft für Krankenhaushygiene (DGKH) erh?lt immer wieder Anfragen, ob die Hautantiseptik vorab notwendig sei oder ob Pen-Nadeln mehrfach verwendet werden dürfen. Deshalb aktualisierte die DGKH jetzt ihr Konsensuspapier und bündelt darin die Empfehlungen der Experten.     

Sensibler Umgang verhindert Retraumatisierung

Traumatische Erfahrungen begleiten Betroffene ein Leben lang - Wird bei einer Krankenhauseinweisung oder beim Umzug in ein Pflegeheim die Posttraumatische Belastungsst?rung nicht erkannt, kann es leicht zu Traumareaktivierungen kommen, die auch juristisch bedeutsame Entscheidungen nach sich ziehen k?nnen.     

The influence of pension funds on corporate governance

Although pension funds have gained importance in the last two decades, their role has not been described in detail by economic models. This article focuses on the scope of these institutional investors when they are not satisfied with a management team of a company in which the pension fund holds a block of shares. Stock holdings by pension funds are largely dispersed. Therefore, any intervention by pension funds in corporate governance requires the formation of a coalition of pension funds. The realization of a coordinated intervention, in turn, is subject to the problems related to the provision of public goods, such as free riding. We find that the stock dispersion and the combined share of pension funds, coordination costs and the attractiveness of the exit option are relevant factors for determining the probability of the success of interventions.     

Messie oder Diogenes?

Typen der Wohnungsdesorganisation - Für den ungeschulten Betrachter ist eine verwahrloste Wohnung eine verwahrloste Wohnung. Doch auch die dort lebenden Menschen unterscheiden sich betr?chtlich in der Art und Weise, wie sie leben.     

Outsourcing of Unionized Firms and the Impact of Labor Market Policy Reforms

This paper shows that outsourcing of parts of the workforce in unionized firms leads to wage moderation both in the case of strategic and flexible outsourcing. As long as the share of the outsourced workforce is not too large, this wage‐moderation effect on domestic employment outweighs the direct substitution effect so that domestic employment increases in unionized firms as outsourcing costs fall. With respect to the impact of labor tax reform changes in the wage tax rate, the tax exemption and the unemployment benefit payments affect domestic wage setting in the same way as in the absence of outsourcing. Furthermore, increasing the degree of tax progression by keeping the relative tax burden per worker constant continues to be good for employment. However, except for low outsourcing activities, the impact of these policy measures will become smaller as outsourcing costs fall.     

The value of extended delegation in dynamic agency

One of the main advantages of delegation is that specific department level information is used. Its main disadvantage is probably that central management looses direct control over certain actions. In this paper we challenge this widely accepted trade-off. We show that delegation might be favorable even if specific knowledge is completely absent. We consider a firm that lives for two periods. Due to its organizational structure part of the tasks and decision rights is inevitably delegated to a subordinate (agent). The agent performs the tasks assigned to him, tantamount to personal effort, in each of the two periods. Besides this effort the decision to implement a particular project has to be made at the beginning of period two. With regard to the project choice, central management can decide to delegate it to the agent (decentralization). Alternatively it can make it personally (centralization). If the project choice is decentralized it remains unobservable for central management. Along with second period effort it must be motivated via an incentive contract written on period output.We analyze two different contracting regimes: long-term commitment and long-term renegotiation-proof contracts. With full commitment we find that centralization is indeed favorable as compared to delegation if no informational advantage exists. This confirms conventional wisdom. However, the result does not necessarily hold with renegotiation-proof contracts. Renegotiation-proofness may force central management to set too low second-period incentives. Delegation counteracts this effect as it allows central management to implicitly commit to a higher second-period incentive rate. This arises as both, personal effort and the project choice, rather than effort alone need to be motivated. A necessary condition for too low second-period incentives, and thus for delegation to be favorable, is a negative intertemporal correlation of output.