Almost all of the recent empirical tests of the rational expectations - permanent income hypothesis (RE-PIH) have rejected the hypothesis. The null hypothesis in this empirical literature typically consists of the joint hypothesis that 1) agents' expectations are formed rationally, 2) desired...

Die Arbeit nimmt die in jüngster Zeit vor allem in den USA er- hobenen Forderungen nach einer verfassungsmässigen Begrenzung der Staatstätigkeit zum Ausgangspunkt für eine systematische Analyse der Vor- und Nachteile einer institutionellen Fixierung der Staats- quote. Grundlagen sind dabei...

Producing high technology output and supplying sophisticated services often involves costly investment in industry-specific skills. But the threat of poaching means that it is the individual ‘stakeholder’, not the firm, who must bear the cost. We investigate various mechanisms for funding...

We are concerned with a problem of scheduling a flexible manufacturing cell with random time operations. A job-shop production section comprises a set of n jobs (orders) and a set of m machines (processors). Each order consists of a chain of operations, each of which needs to be executed during...

We analyse the impact of market structure on the probability of banking failure when banks’ loan portfolios are subject to aggregate uncertainty. In our model borrowers are subject to a moral hazard problem, which induces banks to choose between two second-best alternative devices: costly...