Contacts and the way they are organized in different economic systemsmatter for the economy. In this paper we introduce the notion of Relational Capital to model contacts. Contacts are an input into sold output in our macro model based on matching theory (Pissarides, 1990). We argue that the...

Starting a firm with expansive potential is an option for educated and high-skilled workers. If there are labor market frictions, this additional option can be seen as reducing the chances of ending up in a low-wage job and hence as increasing the incentives for education. In a matching model,...

This paper provides an analytical framework to capture the economic importance of social capital for growth and innovation. Relational Capital (RC) consists of contacts between economic necessary to acquire inputs and to sell outputs units. These contacts form the individual aspect of social...

Due to economic and demographic changes highly educated women play an important role on the Chinese labour market. Gender has been shown to be an important characteristic that influences behaviour in economic experiments, as have, to a lesser degree, academic major, age and income. We provide a...

With credence goods consumers cannot judge the quality they receive compared to the quality they need. The needed quality can only be observed by an expert seller who may exploit the information asymmetry by cheating. In recent years various contributions have analyzed the credence goods problem...

Der Kreditkartenmarkt wird von zwei Firmen bestimmt: VISA und Mastercard/Eurocard. Der Einfluss der "Großen Zwei" hat sowohl in den USA als auch in Europa wettbewerbsrechtliche Bedenken ausgelöst und den bisher kaum wirtschaftswissenschaftlich analysierten Kreditkartenmarkt in den Mittelpunkt...

This paper develops a conceptual framework for the role of social capital in the political economy of innovation, growth and reform, with illustrations from developing and transition countries. It identifies separate but related roles for the individual and communal interpretations of social...

Evidence on behavior of experts in credence goods markets raises an important causality issue: Do "fair prices" induce "good behavior", or do "good experts" post "fair prices"? To answer this question we propose and test a model with three seller types: "the good" choose fair prices and behave...