Taxes on labour and unemployment in a shirking model with union bargaining

This paper studies the impact of a cut in labour taxes in a model that combines two explanations for equilibrium unemployment: employee shirking and union bargaining. It is shown that if the ratio of unemployment compensation to the net-of-tax wages is kept fixed, a tax cut leads to higher unemployment. When the unemployment benefits are fixed in real terms, the effect of a tax cut on unemployment is ambiguous. Adverse employment effects are ruled out if unions are powerless or the labour share is constant.     

Post‐socialist transition and intergenerational educational mobility in Kyrgyzstan

We investigate long‐term trends in intergenerational educational mobility in a lower middle‐income transition economy. We draw on evidence from Kyrgyzstan using data from three household surveys collected in 1993, 1998 and 2011. We find that Kyrgyzstan, like Eastern European middle‐income transition economies, maintained high educational mobility, comparable to levels during the Soviet era. However, we find that the younger cohorts, exposed to the transition during their school years, experienced a rapid decline in educational mobility. We also document that gender differences in schooling and educational mobility, found among older‐aged individuals, disappeared in the younger cohorts.     

On the Use and Abuse of Thorstein Veblen in Modern American Sociology, I: David Riesman's Reductionist Interpretation and Talcott Parsons' Pluralist Critique

A bstract . The analyses and applications of Thorstein Vehlen's social theory by David Riesman and Talcott Parsons are found to be deficient. Riesman's study of Veblen lacks viability because the reductionist methodology he uses psychologizes and sociologizes Veblen rather than examines the theoretical import of his work. Parsons is wrong in denying the originality of Veblen's work and in treating him as an eccentric Utopian. Thus the paradigmatic and ideological bias of both Riesman and Parsons preclude a proper understanding and use of such Veblenian concepts as status emulation and conflict.     

Dynamic pricing in subsidized performing arts

While current pricing strategies in public theaters are mostly based on static schemes, this paper analyzes the potential of dynamic pricing. Subsidized performing arts organizations face the challenge of selling a fixed capacity (available seats of a venue) to a broad and varied audience. Based on the literature and on empirical evidence from a survey among Swiss theaters, we discuss whether and to what extent yield management and uniform‐price auctions—two widespread dynamic pricing mechanisms in the Internet age—can be applied to public theaters in view of the particular goals and targets imposed by their source of funding and by subsidy contracts. Our analysis suggests that although the application of yield management may not be advantageous in the current environment, the introduction of dynamic elements (including auctions) to prevailing pricing strategies can help public theaters respond to temporal demand fluctuations and fill up performances with a varied audience. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Two-sided matching with spatially differentiated agents

We consider the problem of assigning sellers and buyers into stable matches. The agents are located along a line and the match surplus function is decreasing in the distance between partners. We investigate the structure of stable assignments under both non-transferable utility (NTU) and transferable utility (TU). If the surplus function is sufficiently convex, the TU-stable assignments are a subset of the NTU-stable assignments. Furthermore, if trade is restricted to uni-directional flows the unique TU-stable assignment coincides with the unique NTU-stable assignment for every convex surplus function. We also examine the graph-theoretic representation of stable assignments and show that the graph structure can be exploited to compute surplus shares in TU-stable assignments.