Savings mobilisation in developing countries

Stagnating development aid and continued reluctance on the part of western commercial banks to grant new loans to problem debtor countries have led many developing countries to pay greater attention to the mobilisation of their own resources. This article outlines a strategy for increasing the extent to which domestic savings are made available for development financing.     

Transport costs, intermediate goods, and localized growth

This paper presents a dynamic, two-regional, general equilibrium model in which interregional production and trade patterns are endogenously determined. Localized growth stems from the geographical concentration of an industrial sector exhibiting permanent productivity increases. Geographical concentration is a result of the interaction between local market size and local competition in the differentiated input industry. Regional factor endowment with an immobile factor is decisive for the long-run specialization, trade and growth patterns between the regions if large endowment differences prevail. With equal-sized regions, multiple equilibria exist. Furthermore, we argue that integration might lead to increasing regional concentration of production and innovation.     

Sports betting as a new asset class—current market organization and options for development

New asset classes are originally distributed via over the counter channels; mostly negotiated, traded, and settled on a bilateral and ad-hoc basis. Subsequently, the demand for organized market services grows alongside trading volumes, number of market participants, and distribution reach. This paper focuses on sports betting as a new asset class and uses the analogies between the development of traditional and new asset classes as a framework to extend market organization. The first section motivates sports betting as a new asset class based on its economic relevance. In Sect. 2, the European market is described by product design, distribution platforms, and regulatory environment. In Sect. 3, we discuss the dimensions of market model, technology, and regulation as prerequisites to develop organized markets. Against this background, we compare the value chain in financial and sports betting markets to identify and describe three options for development: a regulated market environment, an inter-bookmaker platform, and central counterparty clearing services.

Which employers regard the threat of dismissal as a suitable incentive to motivate workers?

Using German establishment data, this study finds that the share of blue-collar workers, an outdated production technology and a high-wage policy increase the probability that employers regard the threat of dismissal as a suitable incentive. A participatory human resource management policy, the incidence of a works council and difficulties in filling vacancies decrease the probability.     

Disease and development: The role of life expectancy reconsidered

This note estimates the causal effect of life expectancy on per capita income and tests the hypothesis of a non-monotonic effect using finite mixture models. The results confirm the hypothesis and qualify recent evidence for a negative effect by Acemoglu and Johnson (2007).     

COMPETITION IN PRODUCT DESIGN: AN EXPERIMENT EXPLORING INNOVATION BEHAVIOR

We experimentally investigate competition for innovations in a patent race scenario. Pairs of subjects compete as seller firms on a duopoly market, investing in risky search. Successful innovations resulting thereof are rewarded via temporary monopoly rents. Classifying investor types reveals that most of them invest according to objective investment criteria, such as probability of search success and cash flow, as well as to non‐pecuniary criteria, such as intensity of competition and relative performance. For a minority, however, no such correlation is ascertained.     

Estimation of a survival curve with randomly censored data in the presence of a covariate

This paper deals with the estimation of a survival curve in models with random right censoring and dependent censoring mechanism. We consider a specific dependent censorship model in which conditional on a covariate, the survival and censoring times are assumed to be independent. We investigate asymptotic properties of a corrected version of a survival curve estimator introduced by Cheng (1989). In particular we show uniform strong consistency and weak convergence to a Gaussian process. Comparisons of this estimator with the well-known Kaplan-Meier-estimator are included. Finally, some examples illustrate how the estimator performs. Received: February 2000