This study presents a laboratory experiment of the first and second price sealed bid auctions with independent private values, where the distribution of bidder valuations is unknown. In our experimental setting, in first price auctions, bids are lower with the presence of ambiguity. This result...

This paper uses matched employer-employee data for the Czech Republic to study the structure of managerial compensation. The evidence supports two key predictions from tournament theory. First, the managerial pay differential between organizational levels is non-decreasing as one goes up the...

This paper examines the impact of employment density (agglomeration) on the hourly earnings of workers across districts of Great Britain. The potentially two-way causality between agglomeration and productivity is dealt with using two instruments: the total land area of a district and its...

This paper works with a broad data sample of Czech voucher-privatized firms during 1996 - 1999. It analyzes the development of ownership structure and consequently its effect on a firm's performance Ownership concentration had been quite high in 1996 and steadily increased. The single largest...

One of the most enduring debates in economics is whether financial development causes economic growth or whether it is a consequence of increased economic activity. Little research into this question, however, has used a true causality framework. This paper fills this lacuna by using...

In this experiment, we analyze the model of strategic trade policy proposed by Brander and Spencer (1985). Governments can choose whether or not to subsidize domestic firms. Firms compete in a Cournot duopoly, and they know the subsidy decisions when choosing output. Although the theoretical...

The paper provides an empirical analysis of inflation persistence in an inflation targeting country, the Czech Republic, using 412 detailed product-level consumer price indexes underlying the consumer basket over the period from 1994:M1 to 2005:M12. Subject to various sensitivity tests, our...

Operational monetary policy rules are characterized by a parsimonious specification and are therefore prone to specification error when estimated on real data. I devise a policy rule estimation procedure, which is robust to marginal misspecification, and study the effects of specification error...

Turnovec (2005) represents the first rigorous attempt to quantify and compare research of economists affiliated with Czech institutions as well as total output by these institutions. In this comment, I reconsider some of his results. My key finding is that a research-accounting methodology that...

In this paper we develop a general methodology for solving models with heterogeneous agents by projection methods. Our approach is solely based on the functional forms of agents’ optimal policy rules and on a functional condition on the endogenous stationary distribution. Solving...