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作者:Gebhardt, Georg
作者单位:Ulm University
摘要:In this paper, I test the most basic prediction of Grossman and Hart (1986, The Costs and Benefits of Ownership: A Theory of Vertical and Lateral Integration. Journal of Political Economy, 691719): allocations of asset ownership that expose a party to ex-post expropriation reduce this partys ex-ante relationship-specific investments. In the empirical context of the German housing market, I find that relationship-specific investments, such as bathroom renovations, are more frequent if the occup...
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作者:Zilibotti, Fabrizio
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作者:Huber, John D.; Ting, Michael M.
作者单位:Columbia University
摘要:Why might citizens vote against redistributive policies from which they would seem to benefit? Many scholars focus on 'wedge' issues such as religion or race, but another explanation might be geographically-based patronage-or pork. We examine the tension between redistribution and patronage with a model that combines partisan elections across multiple districts with legislation in spatial and divide-the-dollar environments. The model yields a unique equilibrium that describes the circumstances...
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作者:Bartling, Bjoern; Fehr, Ernst; Schmidt, Klaus M.
作者单位:University of Zurich; University of Zurich; University of Munich
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作者:Gorodnichenko, Yuriy; Schnitzer, Monika
作者单位:University of California System; University of California Berkeley; University of Munich
摘要:Abstract This paper examines micro-level channels through which financial development can affect such macroeconomic outcomes as level of income. Specifically, we investigate theoretically and empirically how financial constraints affect a firm's innovation activities. Theoretical predictions are tested using unique firm survey data, which provide direct measures for innovations and firm-specific financial constraints, as well as information on shocks to firms' internal funds that serve as firm...
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作者:Bartling, Bjoern; Fehr, Ernst; Schmidt, Klaus M.
作者单位:University of Zurich; University of Zurich
摘要:Employment contracts give a principal the authority to decide flexibly which task his agent should execute. However, there is a tradeoff, first pointed out by Simon (1951, Econometrica, 19, 293-302), between flexibility and employer moral hazard. An employment contract allows the principal to adjust the task quickly to the realization of the state of the world, but he may also abuse this flexibility to exploit the agent. We capture this tradeoff in an experimental design and show that principa...
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作者:Lalive, Rafael; Wuellrich, Jean-Philippe; Zweimueller, Josef
作者单位:University of Lausanne; University of Zurich
摘要:A number of OECD countries aim to encourage work integration of disabled persons using quota policies. For instance, Austrian firms must provide at least one job to a disabled worker per 25 nondisabled workers and are subject to a tax if they do not. This threshold design provides causal estimates of the noncompliance tax on disabled employment if firms do not manipulate nondisabled employment; a lower and upper bound on the causal effect can be constructed if they do. Results indicate that fi...
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作者:Giavazzi, Francesco; Schiantarelli, Fabio; Serafinelli, Michel
作者单位:Bocconi University; Boston College; University of Toronto
摘要:We study whether cultural attitudes towards gender, the young, and leisure are significant determinants of the employment rates of women and of the young, and of hours worked. We do this controlling for policies, institutions and other structural characteristics of the economy which may influence labor market outcomes. We identify the effect of culture exploiting the evolution over time within country, as well as across countries, of cultural attitudes. We also address the endogeneity of attit...
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作者:Bond, Stephen R.; Soederbom, Mans
作者单位:University of Oxford; University of Gothenburg
摘要:We study the sensitivity of investment to cash flow conditional on measures of q in an adjustment costs framework with costly external finance. We present a benchmark model in which this conditional investmentcash flow sensitivity increases monotonically with the cost premium for external finance, for firms in a financially constrained regime. Using simulated data, we show that this pattern is found in linear regressions that relate investment rates to measures of both cash flow and average q....
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作者:Saiz, Albert; Simonsohn, Uri
作者单位:Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); University of Pennsylvania
摘要:The internet contains billions of documents. We show that document frequencies in large decentralized textual databases can capture the cross-sectional variation in the occurrence frequencies of social phenomena. We characterize the econometric conditions under which such proxying is likely. We also propose using recently-introduced internet search volume indexes as proxies for fundamental locational traits, and discuss their advantages and limitations. We then successfully proxy for a number ...