Das „Staatslexikon“ der Görres-Gesellschaft

Ohne Zusammenfassung Staatslexikon: Recht, Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft. Herausgegeben von der Görres-Gesellschaft.Sechste, völlig neu bearbeitete und erweiterte Auflage.     

Übervölkerung,Untervölkerung Begriffe,Verfahren, Tatsachen

Ohne Zusammenfassung Erweiterte Niederschrift eines im Wiener Afro-asiatischen Institut gehaltenen Vortrages.     

The “Lisbon Goal” of the EU: Rhetoric or Substance?

This paper explores the relationship between the rhetoric of the Lisbon Goal of the EU and key insights from trade theory and growth theory. It argues that the policy initiative as such is valid, but the paradigm of international competitiveness is potentially misleading. The focus should, instead, be on productivity. Industrial policies, while potentially valid against the backdrop of recent developments in growth theory, are subject to pitfalls in practice. Policies focusing on institutions are more promising. The paper offers a framework for discussing the role of different types of institutions with respect to the Lisbon Goal. This paper goes back to a joint presentation with Mario Nava at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna—40th Anniversary Symposium “A Changing Europe in a Changing World” June 24–25, 2004.     

Continuous linear representability of binary relations

Summary A very general result on continuous linear representability of binary relations on topological vector spaces is presented. Applications of this result include individual decision making under uncertainty, i.e. expected utility theory and collective decision making, in particular, utilitaristic social welfare functions.Thanks are due for helpful comments to Manfred Nermuth, David Schmeidler, Antonio Villar, and anonymous referees. Financial support from the DFG under Tr 120/4-2 is gratefully acknowledged.     

REDISTRIBUTIVE EFFECT OF INCOME TAXATION: DECOMPOSING TAX BASE AND TAX RATES EFFECTS

This paper introduces Gini-based decomposition formulae for the redistributive effect of income taxation. It examines the interaction between and the relative significance of tax base and tax rate components in the final determination of the overall redistributive effect. The resulting formulae can readily be applied to available income and tax statistics.     

IMMIGRATION AND NATIVE WELFARE*

This article unifies two approaches for identifying the welfare and wage effects of immigration, one emphasizing the immigration surplus, the other stressing a potential welfare loss due to a terms‐of‐trade effect. We decompose the native welfare effect into a standard complementarity effect, augmented by a Stolper–Samuelson effect, and a terms‐of‐trade effect. We illustrate the welfare and wage effects of endogenous goods prices in a stylized‐specific factors model. Finally, we calibrate this model to a generic OECD economy and provide simulation results. The key insight is that endogenous goods prices play a quantitatively important role, sometimes even overturning received results.     

Boundary behavior of supply: A continuity property of the maximizing correspondence

The normal cone correspondence, which assigns to each point of a convex set the cone of normal vectors to the set at this point, is well known not to be lower hemi-continuous. Sufficient 'conditions for a weaker approximability condition of some points in the graph of this correspondence are given. The result is applied to study the boundary behavior of supply functions of producers who maximize profit on a convex set.     

Bookbuidling, Auctions, and the Future of the IPO Process

Auction theorists predict that bookbuilding, long the standard process for selling equity IPOs in the U.S., is about to give way to an Internet‐based IPO auction process that is both more efficient and more fair. The promise of auctions is that, by using an electronic platform that gives all investors the opportunity to bid on IPOs, the underpricing of IPOs and commissions to underwriters will be reduced, leading to an increase in net proceeds to issuers. Largely missing from such arguments, however, is an appreciation of why bookbuilding has dominated U.S. practice (and continues to supplant auctions in IPOs in most countries outside the U.S) and the role of undepricing in the IPO process. Rather than canvassing all investors, bookbuilding involves eliciting expressions of interest from institutional investors, and then allocating shares mainly according to the strength of their professed interest. In contrast to auctions, which allocate shares according to a set of explicit rules, bookbuilding involves a set of implicit “rules” that provide considerable room for judgment by the underwriter. This does not mean that the rules are arbitrary or not well understood by participants, particularly after thousands of IPOs conducted over the better part of two centuries. But to manage the exchange of information between issuers and investors, and the potential conflicts of interest in representing both groups, such rules must be administered by an intermediary with a considerable stake in protecting its reputation for fair dealing. Investment banks that deal with both issuers and the investment community on a regular basis are well positioned to perform this function. The underpricing of IPOs is best viewed not as a transfer of wealth from issuers to favored investors but rather as compensation to the large influential investors that play a major role in the price discovery process. By opening the process to all comers, auctions will discourage these large investors from bidding aggressively because less sophisticated investors will be able to “free ride” on their research and due diligence. To the extent this happens, auctions may suc ceed in reducing underpricing (in fact, they may even lead to over pricing), but they will also reduce the net proceeds for issuers. Nevertheless, recent advances in communications technology and auction theory will undoubtedly reshape current securities underwriting practices. In particular, Internet auctions are likely to replace bookbuilding in debt IPOs and less risky equity issues (say, IPOs of LBOs). But the argument that Bookbuilding will be completely cast aside in favor of largely untested alternatives fails to appreciate a successful institutional response to major market imperfections, some of which can never be wholly eliminated. Especially in the case of risky (first‐time) equity IPOs, there will continue to be an important role for managing the information exchange between issuers and investors that is critical to the IPO process.