Technology and technological change play a central role in economics, whether in the theory of resource allocation or in the theory of growth and development. Yet the nature of technology is largely ignored in economic theory, it being considered sufficient to treat technology as a constraint on...

The emerge and increasing performance of new information and communicationtechnologies (ICT) has enabled new organisational models of coordination andcooperation. Since the early nineties Virtual Organisations (VOs) as one of these newmodels have been in the focus of scientific research. Among...

This paper investigates politically connected rms in Germany. With the in-troduction of a new transparency law in 2007, information on additional incomesources for all members of the German parliament became publicly available.We nd that members of the conservative party (CDU/CSU) and the...

Metaheuristics, such as evolutionary algorithms or simulated annealing,are widely applicable heuristic optimization strategies that have shownencouraging results for a large number of diffcult optimization problems.To show high performance, metaheuristics need to be adapted to theproperties of...

This paper sheds some light on the debate concerning evolutionary search using Prüfer numbers, and explains some of the controversial results. Previous work has shown that Prüfer numbers have low locality. Furthermore, it has been shown elsewhere that the locality of the Prüfer number depends...

Applying data from 13 waves of the Swiss Labor Force Survey (1991-2003) I assess costs andbenefits of fixed-term contracts. First, I analyze the existence of a contract related wage gapand the effort response of temporary employees in terms of unpaid overtime hours. Second, Iinvestigate whether...

This paper investigates how the use of redundant representations influences the performance ofgenetic and evolutionary algorithms. Representations are redundant if the number of genotypesexceeds the number of phenotypes. A distinction is made between synonymously and nonsynonymouslyredundant...

This paper is the first systematic analysis of the impact of diversificationon the performance of private equity funds. A unique data set allows theexact evaluation of diversification across the dimensions financing stages,industries, and countries. Very different levels of diversification can...

[...]Importantly, these studies rely entirely on ex post analysis.In other words, the studies ask, Given the actual inflationoutcome, did the costs of TIPS issuances exceed the costs ofnominal Treasury issuances of similar durations? Thisapproach depends on the actual inflation outcome, which...

Seit einigen Jahren ist ein gleichbleibender Trend in den Personalbereichenvieler Unternehmen zu beobachten: Wo früherzentrale Personalabteilungen die Rahmenbedingungen für allePersonalaktivitäten definiert haben und für den operativenVollzug aller relevanter Personalaufgaben sorgten, lässt...