We analyze the performance of firms in the German business-related services sector. A quarterly business survey provides the panel data base of our study. Firm performance is measured by the survey respondents' ordinal indication of their changes in total sales. We use a firstorder Markov chain...

We study markets for sensitive personal information. An agent wants to communicate with another party but any revealed information can be intercepted and sold to a third party whose reaction harms the agent. The market for information induces an adverse sorting effect, allocating the information...

Many budget surveys present the interesting features that for a wide range of goods they contain quantity information along with expenditure information, and that the geographical location of households is fairly precise. We take advantage of these features to develop a method for estimation of...

There are many important decision problems where learning through experimentation is costly or impossible. In these situations, individuals may try to learn from observing the outcomes of others who have made similar decisions. Often, however, information about others comprises a selected...

When studying particular subgroups of a population, like for instance lone parents, the econometrician typically has few observations at hand. In such a situation, it is vital to take advantage of any valid complementary information that may be available. In this paper we illustrate, for the...

Dieser Aufsatz beschreibt neuere Entwicklungen in der Aggregationstheorie sowie ausgewählte empirische Arbeiten. Diese stellen exemplarisch dar, wie die Mikroökonometrie eingesetzt werden kann, um Aggregationsprobleme zu untersuchen und approximative Lösungen zu finden. Der Schwerpunkt liegt...

Gerlach and Stephan (1994) proposed a test based on the idea that the wage premium, the part of the wage which is not explained by the stock of human capital, should help predict variables such as career expectations (quit, change occupation, leave the labour force) and some job characteristics...

A number of studies have evaluated the social welfare impact of price and income changes using equivalent incomes that are computed at some reference price vector, and an aggregator with these equivalent incomes as arguments in place of a social welfare function. This paper investigates the...

We experimentally examine the effects of price competition in markets for expe-rience goods where sellers can build up reputations for quality. We compare price competition to monopolistic markets and markets where prices are exogenously fixed (somewhere between the endogenous oligopoly and...

In a tedious real effort task, subjects know that their piece rate is either low or ten times higher. When subjects are informed about their piece rate realization, they adapt their performance. One third of subjects nevertheless forego this instrumental information when given the choice - and...