Publications

We re-consider the bilateral bargaining problem of a multi-product, manufacturer–retailer trading relationship. O’Brien and Shaffer (2005) have shown that the unbundling of contracts leads to downward distorted production levels if seller power is strong, while otherwise the joint profit maximizing quantities are contracted (which is also always the case when bundling contracts are feasible). We show that the unbundling of contracts also leads to downward distorted output levels when the buyer firm has sufficient (Nash) bargaining power (i.e., buyer power). Our result is driven by cost substitutability (diseconomies of scope).

Die vorliegende Studie verfolgt zwei grundlegende Ziele: erstens eine systematische Erfassung zentraler Bereiche des Schulleitungshandelns an beruflichen Schulen in der Schweiz und zweitens die empirische Überprüfung der Wirksamkeit eines einjährigen Trainingsprogramms zur Förderung relevanter Führungskompetenzen von Schulleitenden. Das hierfür entwickelte Training umfasste eine Serie von Führungskräfte-Workshops mit kombinierten Coachings. Auf Basis einer quasi-experimentellen Untersuchung mit Experimental- und Kontrollgruppe wurde die Wirksamkeit der Intervention mehrperspektivisch untersucht. Die Ergebnisse der Studie machen deutlich, dass an den 29 betrachteten Schulen die transformationale Führung der dominierende Führungsstil der Schulleitenden darstellt. Darüber hinaus zeigt sich, dass die Lehrpersonen (N = 607) das Leitungshandeln der Schulleitenden im Mittel weniger positiv bewerten als dies die Mitglieder der Schulleitung (N = 101) tun. Aus Sicht der Schulleitenden lassen sich vereinzelte positive Effekte auf das Leitungshandeln identifizieren, welche auf das Trainingsprogramm zurückgeführt werden können.

Risk-neutral distributions of the S&P 500 are informative about the COVID-19 pandemic beyond what one can learn from index values and the market fear gauge of the VIX alone. We learn that, on February 20, 2020, the index did not yet reflect the impending crisis. Only on March 16, 2020, was the full impact visible, with a pronounced bimodality for longer-maturity options revealing a sizeable crash scenario. The corresponding physical distribution is more symmetric and features a high-volatility crash scenario. Firms bought crash protection ahead of the index crash, whereas retail customers bought it as the index was already recovering.

A standard model of price-setting is extended to include an important role for price points as well as sticky information. It makes empirically reasonable predictions about the frequency of price adjustments, the sizes of price increases and decreases, the shape of the hazard function, the fraction of price changes that are price increases, and the relationship between price changes and inflation. When the model of price-setting is integrated into a small-scale DSGE model, it implies plausible aggregate effects of monetary policy in contrast to a model with a prominent role for price points but no information rigidities.

Background:
With DRG payments, hospitals can game the system by 'upcoding' true patient's severity of illness. This paper takes into account that upcoding can be performed by the chief physician and hospital management, with the extent of the distortion depending on hospital's internal decision-making process. The internal decision making can be of the principal-agent type with the management as the principal and the chief physician as the agent, but the chief physicians may be able to engage in negotiations with management resulting in a bargaining solution.

Results:
In case of the principal-agent mechanism, the distortion due to upcoding is shown to accumulate, whereas in the bargaining case it is avoided at the level of the chief physician.

Conclusion:
In the presence of upcoding it may be appropriate for the sponsor to design a payment system that fosters bargaining to avoid additional distortions even if this requires extra funding.

We examine “Forward Guidance Contracts,” which penalize central bankers for choosing high interest rates. We integrate those contracts into the New Keynesian Framework and show that they can be used to overcome a liquidity trap. Moreover, although the government takes only a share of the social benefits into account when it has to decide whether to offer the contract, we demonstrate that for plausible parameter values the government will always find it desirable to offer the contract in a liquidity trap but not in normal times. Finally, we show that the optimal duration of such contracts is typically very short.

This paper studies the effect of oil wealth on the provision of education in the early 20th century United States. Using information on the location and discovery of major oil fields, I find that oil wealth increased local revenue and education spending. However, population increased, and as consequence, schooling quality did not improve across the board. Nominal teacher wages increased, and oil-rich counties were more likely to participate in the Rosenwald school building program for blacks. However, neither student-teacher ratios nor school attendance rates improved in the wake of oil discoveries.

In higher education, across countries, a large share of students choose to study economics. Although there is only a small difference in the share of female and male students in that field, there is robust empirical evidence of a gender gap in economic competencies, showing that male students in most cases outperform female students. There is a broad discussion about the differences in gender-specific socializations that cause this gender gap. However, no research exists on the long-term effects of this gender gap. This study uses longitudinal and representative data of N = 1397 Swiss students (824 female students) to analyse the gender-specific effects of economic competencies at the end of the upper secondary level on their aspiration and decision to study economics. The results show that economic knowledge and interest in economics have a substantially stronger effect on the choice of economics for female students. The aspiration to study strongly mediates these effects. We argue that these results can mainly be traced back to different interests and self-perceptions of skills and abilities in economics caused by gender-specific socialization. Possible implications of gender socialization and discrimination in economics for secondary and higher education and for the labour market are discussed.

We investigate the effect of individualism—a dimension of culture that is strongly associated with entrepreneurship—on venture-capital investments using a large cross-country sample. Our sample consists of 1496 country-year observations and includes 88 countries from 1998 to 2014. Controlling for economic conditions, the legal environment, and different aspects of culture, we find that individualism is positively and significantly related to venture-capital investments and explains 30% of cross-country variation. This result is stable across different subsamples, several measures of venture-capital investments, and even holds when using the political system 200 years ago as an instrument for individualism. The quality of formal institutions (rule of law) and entrepreneurial attitudes (uncertainty avoidance) partially mediate the effect of individualism on venture-capital investments, while economic conditions (GDP per capita) moderate this effect.

I model the strategic interaction between scientists aiming for promotion and a research institution that seeks a highly productive faculty by setting a maternity allowance in the form of a minimum promotion standard. The model shows that maternity allowances need not derive from moral justice arguments but can emerge endogenously from efficiency considerations. The underlying mechanism rests on the assumption that exceptionally productive female professionals are also exceptionally productive if they choose to become mothers. Even though motherhood temporarily handicaps their productivity, it is exactly this cost of motherhood that signals the mothers’ intrinsic high productivity. I explicitly refer to the academic labor market and use empirical evidence from academia to justify the model's specification, but the conclusions carry over to promotion decisions at the executive level in most professional lines of occupation.