Regulation of Labour Markets in the European Union

EU regulation of labour markets under the Social Charter and Protocol to improve 'employment rights' may appear loudable but can prove costly for firms. Mandates will probably make the unskilled more difficult to employ.     

Financial instability and the real economy

Summary The paper deals with three different areas of the financial sphere: national moneys, exchange rates and financial claims, markets and institutions. For each of them, it tries to identify the main forms of instability which may occur, their causes and consequences for the real economy. Depending on the area concerned, the forms of instability include inflation, fluctuations and misalignments in interest rates, exchange rates and asset prices and finally solvency and liquidity crises of institutions. It is concluded that, over the last fifteen years, significant progress has been made in the policy framework to counteract instabilities in the national and monetary spheres. The conclusion is more mixed with regard to the structure of financial markets.[/p]We are grateful to Julian Alworth, Svein Andresen, Gavin Bingham, Joe Bisignano, Michael Hutchison and Paul van den Bergh for useful comments.     

Schumpeter's circular flow,learning by doing and cyclical growth

A two-sector growth model with endogenous technical change is presented. Concerning technical change, we assume that it is reflected by increases in the stock of human capital which are acquired through learning by doing. As a result, it turns out that transitory or, using the Hopf bifurcation theorem, persistent oscillations of the economic variables may be the outcome. Thus we are able to show that learning mechanisms alone may be sufficient to destroy the circular flow as described by Schumpeter.     

Linear cumulative prospect theory with applications to portfolio selection and insurance demand

Abstract The present paper combines loss attitudes and linear utility by providing an axiomatic analysis of corresponding preferences in a cumulative prospect theory (CPT) framework. In a sense we derive a two-sided variant of Yaari’s dual theory, i.e., nonlinear probability weights in the presence of linear utility. The first important difference is that utility may have a kink at the status quo, which allows for the exhibition of loss aversion. Also, we may have different probability weighting functions for gains than for losses. We apply the model to both portfolio selection and insurance demand. Our results show that CPT with linear utility has more realistic implications than the dual theory since it implies only a weakened variant of plunging. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 91B08, 91B28, 91B30 Journal of Economic Literature Classification: D81, G11, G22     

Income Redistribution with Well-Informed Local Governments

This paper examines the problem of redistributing incomeacross jurisdictions and to mobile workers within jurisdictionswhen local governments have better information than the centralgovernment about local production conditions. Under the centralgovernments optimal policy, the subsidies or taxes that localgovernments provide to mobile workers normally depend on whetherthese governments are net recipients or net donors of interjurisdictionalincome transfers. Moreover, the public-input decisions of somelocal governments are distorted. The analysis demonstrates thatit may not be desirable to harmonize social policies across jurisdictions,even when the beneficiaries are quite mobile.     

Estimating Differential Dynamic Merger Effects on Market Structure and Entry in Related Markets

The U.S. and EU merger guidelines emphasize “ease of entry” arguments but little is known about the dynamic impact of realized mergers on market structure. This study provides insights on this topic with the use of detailed firm-level data on the memory chip market. Our estimation results provide evidence for differential merger effects on market structure. These effects depend on whether the mergers are dominated by market-power or efficiency gains. While efficiency-dominated mergers cause exit, market-power-dominated mergers attract entrants, and these effects are increasing over time. We also find that market-power mergers have a larger effect on entry than efficiency mergers have on exit. Our results show that mergers can reduce the number of potential entrants into related product markets and serve as an instrument to “reduce the likelihood of entry”.

     

Technological unemployment in industrial countries

Using annual data on 21 industrial countries from the period 1985 to 2009 and a large number of controls, this paper empirically analyzes the impact of technological change on unemployment. As proxy for technological change, it uses the ratio of triadic patent families to population. According to the regression results, an increase in technological change substantially increases unemployment over 3 years. There is no long-term effect, though. The results are robust to both endogeneity and numerous variations in specifications. They support theoretical contributions according to which faster technological progress may increase unemployment, at least during a transition period.     

Privatisation in East Germany

The research on which the present paper is based was financially supported by the University of Paderborn.     

On nonparametric estimation of the Schumpeterian link between innovation and firm size: Evidence from Belgium,France, and Germany

This paper analyses the Schumpeterian link between innovative activity and firm size by means of the nonparametric Nadaraya-Watson estimator and of the partially linear approach by Speckman. Four data sets referring to the manufacturing industries of three European countries are available for the analysis. We demonstrate how nonparametric methods can produce more reliable conclusions than conventional methods. For this purpose, the roles of bandwidth choice, wild bootstrap, density estimation and trimming are studied. For the German data set of 1984 and for the French data set we find that small firms and large firms are more innovative than firms of intermediate size while the relation is rather hump-shaped for Germany 1989 and decreasing for Belgium. Including an additional parametric component into the estimations based on the French data contributes considerably to the explanation of innovative activity without affecting the U-shaped link between innovation and firm size.