Publications

Mit der an sieben Schweizer Gymnasien vorgenommenen Implementation des anwendungs- und problemorientierten Unterrichts (APU) war die Absicht verbunden, kognitive und nichtkognitive Bildungsziele in den Fächern "Wirtschaft und Recht" und "Geographie" gleichermaßen zu fördern. An der in der Zeit von August 2006 bis Februar 2008 durchgeführten Interventionsstudie waren insgesamt 450 Schülerinnen und Schüler beteiligt. Die Analysen der im Rahmen eines quasi-experimentellen Designs mit vier Messzeitpunkten erhobenen Daten machen deutlich, dass eine Implementationsdauer von zumindest 12 Monaten nötig ist, bevor sich Effekte nachweisen lassen. Innerhalb des ersten Schuljahres zeigen sich dagegen entweder keine Unterschiede oder in Teilen sogar Vorteile auf Seiten der Kontrollgruppe. Wir nehmen an, dass APU in der ersten Phase der Implementation sowohl für die Lehrkräfte als auch für die Lernenden ungewohnt war. Mit zunehmender Internalisierung der veränderten Lehr-/Lernkultur führte die Anwendung des APU-Modells zu ersten intendierten Wirkungen. Gleichwohl kann von einer durchgängigen Bestätigung der Veränderungshypothese nicht gesprochen werden.

The literature argues that if injurers cannot anticipate the precise level of harm, courts might use expected harm as a magnitude of compensation instead of actual harm without distorting care incentives. This paper shows that the use of expected harm is in fact preferable if victims choose the value of the object placed at risk. If the court were to insist on compensating actual harm, this would result in victims choosing inefficient object values. In contrast, restricting compensation to expected harm yields the first-best outcome.

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dc.contributor.author: Krahnen, Jan Pieter

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dc.contributor.author: Wünsche, Cornelia

Providing incentives to subjects in internet experiments can be tricky. One simple method is a high score (as in computer games). We test whether high scores provide adequate incentives in comparison to the usual performance based incentives. We find significant differences.

The severity of the sanction for a given offense is often determined by the offense history of the offender. We establish that this policy can be welfare-maximizing if individuals are imperfectly informed about the magnitude of the sanction. Imperfect information distorts individuals perception of the expected sanction of the first offense. Once detected, individuals learn about the sanction applicable to their act, making this argument less relevant for consecutive offenses.

Mit der in der Zeit von August 2006 bis Februar 2008 an sieben schweizerischen Gymnasien vorgenommenen Implementation des anwendungs- und problemorientierten Unterrichts (APU) war die Absicht vebunden, über eine Orientierung an elf Unterrichtsleitlinien kognitive und nichtkognitive Bildungsziele in den Fächern «Wirtschaft und Recht» und «Geografie» gleichermassen zu fördern. Die empirischen Analysen zeigen, dass eine Anlaufphase von zwölf Monaten notwendig war, bevor erste intendierte Effekte auf Seiten der Lernenden erzielt wurden.

We examine whether the monetary policy committee of a monetary union should publish its voting records when members are appointed by national politicians. We show that the publication of voting records lowers overall welfare. This finding also holds for arbitrary levels of private benefits from holding office and if governments incur costs when replacing committee members. High private benefits of committee members always lower overall welfare, as they induce nonpartisan members to care more about being reappointed than about beneficial policy outcomes. Nonrenewable but long terms for national committee members and delegating the appointment of all committee members to a union-wide authority would be desirable.

This paper considers the stability of tacit collusion in price setting duopolies with repeated interaction. The minimum discount factor above which tacit collusion can be sustained in a subgame perfect equilibrium is called the critical discount factor delta*. In addition, delta* is often used as an intuitive measure for the stability of a tacit cartel, assuming that a collusive equilibrium is more difficult to sustain when delta* increases. However, according to standard theory the distance delta - delta* between the actual and the critical discount factor does not matter for stability as long as delta > delta*. This paper contributes experimental evidence that supports the intuitive idea that a larger critical discount factor makes collusion a less likely outcome.

A new, fully data-driven bandwidth selector with a double smoothing (DS) bias term and a data-driven variance estimator is developed following the bootstrap idea. The data-driven variance estimation does not involve any additional bandwidth selection. The proposed bandwidth selector convergences faster than a plug-in one due to the DS bias estimate, whereas the data-driven variance improves its finite sample performance clearly and makes it stable. Asymptotic results of the proposals are obtained. A comparative simulation study was done to show the overall gains and the gains obtained by improving either the bias term or the variance estimate, respectively. It is shown that the use of a good variance estimator is more important when the sample size is relatively small.

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dc.contributor.author: Bauer, Agnes

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