INEQUALITY,INCOMPLETE CONTRACTS,AND THE SIZE DISTRIBUTION OF BUSINESS FIRMS*

This article analyzes the effects of intrafirm bargaining on the formation of firms in an economy with imperfect capital markets and contracting constraints. In equilibrium, wealth inequality induces a heterogeneous distribution of firm sizes, allowing for firms both too small and too large in terms of technical efficiency. The findings connect well to empirical facts such as the missing middle of firm‐size distributions in developing countries. The model can encompass a nonmonotonic relationship between aggregate output and inequality. It turns out that an inflow of capital may indeed decrease output in absolute terms.     

Where Should the Elderly Live and Who Should Pay for Their Care?*

We consider a model with a population consisting of earners and retired persons; elderly care is publicly provided. There is one big city, where congestion effects and agglomeration forces are at work, and a number of small villages. We show how the externalities related to population mobility lead to an inefficient spatial distribution of earners and retirees, and we characterize the second‐best solution. Decentralization of this solution in a fiscal federalism structure requires the use of taxes and subsidies proportional to the number of earners and retired persons living in the city and the villages.     

The determinants of service exports from Central and Eastern Europe

The transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have become important exporters of many types of services to Western Europe. We identify the sources of CEE’s advantages over competing exporters, such as India, China and Brazil, using disaggregated data on service exports and a novel estimation technique for the gravity equation. Our results indicate that the importance of geographical distance varies substantially across types of service exports. Geography is important for exports of construction services, but it has a negligible impact on computer‐related services. However, the relative quality of legal institutions influences trade across a broad range of service categories. The results demonstrate that aggregating services that are not homogeneous could conceal important differences in the effects of geographical distance and other variables on the pattern of service trade.     

Tax revenue and (or?) trade liberalization

With the public finances of many developing and emerging market countries still heavily dependent on trade tax revenues, further trade liberalization may be hindered unless they are able to develop alternative sources of revenue. Against a background of, and to inform, heightened theoretical controversy as to the appropriate balance between trade and other taxes (not least the VAT), this paper uses panel data for 117 countries over 32 years—cleaned for a variety of problems in standard data sources—to address a central question of fact: Have countries recovered from domestic taxes the revenues they have lost from past episodes of trade liberalization? For high income countries, the answer is clearly ‘yes.’ For middle income countries, there are robust signs of strong replacement both concurrently with the revenue loss and—essentially dollar-for-dollar—in the long run. Signs of significant recovery by low income countries are flimsier, however, and their experiences appear to have varied widely. The picture that emerges for low income countries is thus that replacement has been (and become) higher than previous studies have suggested, but sufficiently incomplete in many cases to give cause for concern.     

Explaining constitution-makers’ preferences: the cases of Estonia and the United States

This article is concerned with the effects of the kinds of framers involved in constitution-making on the content of constitutional provisions proposed during the drafting process. It tests the hypotheses that predict framers’ constitutional preferences on the basis of their institutional position, partisan background and constitutional expertise with two specific cases: the Constitutional Assembly of Estonia (1991–1992) and the Federal Convention (1787) of the United States. The case studies show that most of the hypotheses find only partial confirmation in both instances of constitution-making. The institutional position of a framer (being a member of existing legislature or executive) and constitutional expertise does not necessarily influence his or her constitutional preferences in the predicted way. The only theoretical proposition that is corroborated in both cases concerns the importance of group interest in a constitutional choice of electoral system and modes of representation: in the Estonian case, the design of the constitutional electoral rules was strongly influenced by partisan interest; in the US case, the interests of territorial subunits played a major role.     

Improving Software Flexibility for Business Process Changes

In times of continuous change, companies need to adjust their business processes to gain sustainable competitive advantage. Resulting changes in the company’s IT currently require the involvement of developers from departments that are mostly not aligned with the business. These changes often result in high transaction and labor costs. The article presents a platform-based method to adjust business processes with the aim of increasing both efficiency and flexibility compared to current approaches. The core of our work is an evaluation against traditional component-based software development using a sound simulation model. Three real-world scenarios of business process change show that – despite a slight increase in transaction costs – our suggested method decreases labor costs while increasing operational flexibility.