This paper considers moral hazard insurance markets when voluntary monitoring technologies are available and insureds may choose the precision of monitoring. Also privacy costs incurred thereby are taken into account. Two alternative contract schemes are compared in terms of welfare: (i)...

This paper is concerned with the role of firm heterogeneity under credit constraints for economic growth. We focus on firm size, innovativeness and credit constraints in a semi-endogenous growth model reflecting recent empirical findings on firm heterogeneity. It allows for an explicit solution...

Innovation is the major driver of economic growth and development. To analyze innovation processes the restriction of a framework suited to the analysis of innovation towards the industrial sphere of an economy is not sufficient because of the important co-evolutionary dimensions of innovation....

Empirical studies show that the elasticity of substitution between capital and labor is larger than one in developed countries but smaller in developing countries. This paper develops a production function which allows for this structure in the elasticity of substitution. The case of a falling...

This paper develops a production function which two separate elasticities of substitution between two input factors. One of these elasticities is obtained if the factor intensity equals a particular baseline value. The second part of the paper gives an economic application and shows the...

Electronic commerce and flexible manufacturing allow personalization of initially standardized products at low cost. Will customers provide the information necessary for personalization? Assuming that a consumer can control the amount of information revealed, we analyse how his decision...