An Experimental Bribery Game

Essential characteristics of corruption are (1) reciprocityrelationships between bribers and public officials, (2) negativewelfare effects, and (3) high penalties when discovered. Weseparate the influences of these factors in an experiment. Ina two-player game, reciprocation is economically inefficientthrough negative externalities. A control treatment withoutexternalities is also conducted. In a third, so-called suddendeath treatment, corrupt pairs face a low probability of exclusionfrom the experiment without payment. The results show that reciprocitycan establish bribery relationships, where negative externalitieshave no apparent effect. The penalty threat significantly reducescorruption, although discovery probabilities are typically underestimated.     

Robustly optimal monetary policy in a microfounded New Keynesian model

We consider optimal monetary stabilization policy in a New Keynesian model with explicit microfoundations, when the central bank recognizes that private-sector expectations need not be precisely model-consistent, and wishes to choose a policy that will be as good as possible in the case of any beliefs close enough to model-consistency. We show how to characterize robustly optimal policy without restricting consideration a priori to a particular parametric family of candidate policy rules. We show that robustly optimal policy can be implemented through commitment to a target criterion involving only the paths of inflation and a suitably defined output gap, but that a concern for robustness requires greater resistance to surprise increases in inflation than would be considered optimal if one could count on the private sector to have “rational expectations.”     

A forecasting comparison of some var techniques

Higher dimensional multivariate time series models suffer from the problem of over-parametrisation which impairs their forecasting performance. Starting from such unrestricted vector autoregressive models the paper discusses two ways to cope with this difficulty. The first approach reduces the number of free parameters by applying a subset modelling strategy. The second approach takes a Bayesian point of view by formulating ‘priors’ which are then combined with sample information, but leaving the original specification unaltered. Using Austrian quarterly macroeconomic time series a comparative study is undertaken by running alternative forecasting exercises. Both methods improve out-of-sample forecasting performance substantially at the cost of some bias in ex-post simulations. Comparing the ex-ante predictions of the two approaches, the former does better at short horizons whereas the latter gains as the forecast horizon lengthens.     

Increasing life expectancy and optimal retirement in general equilibrium

We analytically assess the effects of changes in longevity on the interest rate, the consumption-savings behavior, and the optimal retirement decision within a dynamic general equilibrium setting. We derive a simple sufficient condition for which the optimal retirement age always increases with life expectancy. Numerical assessment reveals that for realistic parameter values that reflect the situation in industrialized countries, the optimal retirement age indeed increases with life expectancy and the sufficient condition tends to be fulfilled. Together with the fact that the actual retirement age did not increase in industrialized countries over the last decades, while there have been large improvements in longevity, this leads us to conclude that strong monetary and institutional incentives for early retirement exist and these counteract the effects of increasing life expectancy. Our policy conclusion is that the retirement age should be partially linked to life expectancy and that incentives for early retirement should be removed.     

Raw materials prices remain low

While there has been little change in prices for industrial commodities since last autumn, the price of oil continued its downward trend to the end of the year. Many commodity exporting countries are suffering under the burden of low prices. Will the long-awaited recovery begin this year?     

Asset market games of survival: a synthesis of evolutionary and dynamic games

The paper examines a game-theoretic model of a financial market in which asset prices are determined endogenously in terms of a short-run equilibrium. Investors use general, adaptive strategies (portfolio rules) depending on the exogenous states of the world and the observed history of the game. The main goal is to identify portfolio rules, allowing an investor to “survive,” i.e., to possess a positive, bounded away from zero, share of market wealth over an infinite time horizon. The model under consideration combines a strategic framework characteristic for stochastic dynamic games with an evolutionary solution concept (survival strategies), thereby linking two fundamental paradigms of game theory.     

Prüfungsforschung im deutschen Sprachraum – Bestandsaufnahme, Entwicklungstendenzen und Herausforderungen

National and European regulatory initiatives like the Bologna process frame the conditions for research activities at universities. The changed conditions increase the pressure to publish articles in highly-ranked, mostly international academic journals. It seems likely that expectations of the international research community will affect the applied research methods, the regional focus of the research object and the tendency towards co-authorship. Against this background, the present article conducts a literature review in order to examine the publication activities of German-speaking auditing researchers and discusses further explanations for the observed developments. We examine 308 journal articles by German-speaking auditing researchers between 2000 and 2011. Our analysis documents an increase in the number of articles over time as well as an increase in articles in highly ranked journals. In recent years a higher share of the research applies empirical methods, in particular statistical interference. A dominant topic of the articles is the audit market and environment. Thematic focuses vary over time, partly due to day to day events. The research object remains focused on a European and especially national context in many cases. We present selected key research results and finally discuss challenges for research activities coming along with the described developments.