Wie eine Finanztransaktionssteuer funktionieren kann

Die Finanztransaktionssteuer wird zumindest in Deutschland immer popul?rer. Nachdem sie lange nur von Kapitalismuskritikern gefordert wurde, fi nden sie auch unter den Mitgliedern der Euro-Zone immer mehr Anh?nger. In diesem Beitrag werden verschiedene Ans?tze diskutiert, wie eine solche Steuer ausgestaltet werden k?nnte.     

Cross-sectional earnings risk and occupational sorting: The role of risk attitudes

This paper investigates to what extent individuals' risk preferences are correlated with the cross-sectional earnings risk of their occupation. We exploit data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, which contains a direct survey question about willingness to take risks that has been shown to be a behaviorally valid measure of risk aversion. As a measure of earnings risk, we use the cross-sectional variation in earnings that is left unexplained by human capital variables in Mincerian wage regressions. Our evidence shows that individuals with low willingness to take risks are more likely to work in occupations with low earnings risk. This pattern is found regardless of the level of occupation categories, region, gender and labor market experience.     

Explaining the World Heritage List: an empirical study

The UNESCO World Heritage List is designed to protect the global heritage. We show that, with respect to countries and continents, the existing World Heritage List is highly imbalanced. Major econometric determinants of this imbalance are historical GDP, historical population, area in square kilometers of a country, and number of years of high civilization. Surprisingly, economic and political factors, such as membership on the UN Security Council, which should be unrelated to the value of a country’s heritage and therefore should have no impact, are shown to have a systematic impact on the composition of the World Heritage List.     

Competition and innovation: an experimental investigation

The paper analyzes the effects of more intense competition on firms’ investments in process innovations. More intense competition corresponds to an increase in the number of firms or a switch from Cournot to Bertrand competition. We carry out experiments for two-stage games, where R&D investment choices are followed by product market competition. An increase in the number of firms from two to four reduces investments, whereas a switch from Cournot to Bertrand increases investments, even though theory predicts a negative effect in the four-player case. The results arise both in treatments in which both stages are implemented and in treatments in which only one stage is implemented. However, the positive effect of moving from Cournot to Bertrand competition is more pronounced in the former case.     

Bank reputation in the private debt market

We examine the impact of lead arrangers' reputation on the design of loan contracts such as spread and fees charged. Controlling for the non-randomness of the lender–borrower match (self-selection bias), we find that the reputation of top tier arrangers leads to higher spreads, and that top tier arrangers retain larger fractions of their loans in their syndicates. These larger spreads are especially pronounced for borrowers without credit rating that have the most to gain from the certification assumed by virtue of a loan contract with a top tier arranger. This certification channel differs from the one found in public markets, where certification leads to a reduced spread offered to the best clients. These differences between public and private markets can be explained by differences in the way they operate and are structured. Interestingly, the effect is strongest for transactions done after the changes in the banking regulations (including the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994) that led to significant consolidations in the banking industry, including among the largest commercial banks.     

Business managers and moral sanctuaries

Moral Sanctuary is used in this paper as a metaphor for any theory which makes actions immune from moral criticism. Three arguments favoring moral sanctuaries for business activities are countered. Two of the arguments rest on faulty analogies. One compares business activities to games, another to the behavior of machines. The third rests on the claim that business is a unique activity. This position is rejected by a reductio ad absurdum argument; it entails the immunity of all professional activities from moral judgment. I argue that business managers are accountable to the combined requirements of professionalism and democratic citizenship, notions which are briefly described at the conclusion of the paper.