Job Creation and Job Destruction in a Regulated Labor Market: The Case of Austria

We study Austrian job reallocation in the period of 1978 to 1998, using a large administrative dataset where we correct for spurious entries and exits of firms. We find that on average 9 out of 100 randomly selected jobs were created within the last year, and that about 9 out of randomly selected 100 jobs were destroyed within the next year. Hence, the magnitude of Austrian job flows seems to be comparable to other countries, similar to the well-known results of Davis et al. (1996) for the United States. Job reallocation appears to be driven primarily by idiosyncratic shocks. However, job creation increases significantly during cyclical upswings whereas job destruction rises in downturns. We also find substantial persistence of job creation and destruction. The pronounced pattern of job reallocation rates falling with firm size and age continues to hold when we use a set of controls. Finally, we show that – controlling for sector and firm size composition – Austrian job reallocation rates are only half the rates for the U.S. This result is not surprising given the impact of tighter regulation and labor law in Austria.     

Fair ranking of teachers

Economic theory suggests that it is optimal to reward teachers depending on the relative performance of their students. We develop an econometric approach, based on stochastic frontier analysis, to construct a fair ranking that accounts for the socio-economic background of students and schools and the imprecision inherent in achievement data. Using German PIRLS (IGLU) data, we exploit the hierarchical structure of the data to estimate the efficiency of each teacher. A parsimonious set of control variables suffices to get a “fair” estimate of unobserved teacher quality. A Hausman–Taylor type estimator is the preferred estimator because teacher efficiency and some exogenous variables may be correlated.     

Joseph A. Schumpeter’s contributions in the area of fiscal sociology: a first approximation

Fiscal sociology deals with the ramifications of the fiscal activities of the state into areas which are not their primary target. These effects may occur in sectors not directly affected such as related markets, but they may also occur outside the economic sphere proper, such as in politics, culture, religion, or society at large. Schumpeter contributed to the research project of fiscal sociology throughout his life. In this first approximation, his contribution is discussed in terms of his appreciation of three important scholars who all made landmark contributions to fiscal sociology: Franz Oppenheimer, Werner Sombart, and Gustav (von) Schmoller.JEL Classification: B15, H39     

Probleme gleichgewichtsorientierter Inflationserklärungen

Ohne ZusammenfassungHerrn Doz. Abele und Herrn Dr. Beinsen bin ich für die kritische Durchsicht dieser Arbeit zu Dank verpflichtet. Doz. Abele hat mir vor allem allgemeine Hinweise zum Stand der Theorie gegeben, die mich zu dieser Arbeit erst so recht anregten.     

Modelling of repairable systems with various degrees of repair

The availability of a stochastic repairable system depends on the failure behaviour and on repair strategies. In this paper, we deal with a general repair model for a system using auxiliary counting processes and corresponding intensities which include various degrees of repair (between minimal repair and perfect repair). For determining the model parameters we need estimators depending on failure times and repair times: maximum likelihood (ML) estimator and Bayes estimators are considered. Special results are obtained by the use of Weibull-type intensities and random observation times.     

A probability inequality for ranges and its application to maximum range test procedures

Summary It is proved that for any fixed argument the sequence (P _k) of the distribution functions of the ranges ofk i.i.d. univariate random variables is log-concave if the random variables have a log-concave density. If the support of the distribution is an infinite interval and the density is monotonous then the theorem holds also with “log-convex” instead of “log-concave”. The resulting inequalities can be used by a quick algorithm for closed maximum range test procedures for all pairwise comparisons (Royen 1988, 1989a, 1989b). Under the above assumptions the application of this algorithm can be extended e.g. to pairwise comparisons of variances.     

Bestimmung kostenoptimaler Parameter für den kontinuierlichen Stichprobenplan vonDodge

Summary Dodge's sampling plan for a continuous production process is determined by two constantsi andk. Under some assumptions about the statistical properties of the production process the average loss due to the costs for inspection and for replacing defective units by good ones is described by a loss function. It is shown that there are always constantsi andk which minimize the loss function in a special sense. Tables of these optimum parameters are computed.