This paper is intended to bridge the theoretical literature describing efficient intra-household behaviour and the development literature that collects empirical regularities pointing toward the existence of strategic decision-making among spouses. It examines the key elements of the collective...

This paper develops a theoretical framework to assess the feasibility of global environmental sustainability solutions based on one or more value changes. The framework represents four sustainability paradigms (weak sustainability WS, a-growth AG, de-growth DG, strong sustainability SS) and five...

This paper develops a new model of trade policy under dictatorship and democratization. The paper makes two contributions. One is to provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between political institutions and economic efficiency by studying the endogenous interaction between the form...

This paper presents an experimental analysis of 2x2 coordination games in which player 1 earns a substantially higher payoff than player 2 except in the inefficient equilibrium where they earn the same payoffs. The main focus is on the comparison of two treatments with and without the ex post...

Productivity and efficiency are key performance indicators of improved seeds. Efficiency differences explain part of the variation in productivity. Improved seeds may affect efficiency because farmers often do not apply inputs at optimum. Improved seeds therefore not only directly affect...

Productivity and efficiency are key performance indicators of improved seeds. Efficiency differences explain part of the variation in productivity. Improved seeds may affect efficiency because farmers often do not apply inputs at optimum. Improved seeds therefore not only directly affect...

Two banknotes and two coins of the New Taiwan Dollar are infrequently (if at all) used in Taiwan when people make cash payments. This note examines the effect of this behavior on the efficiency of cash payments. The results are compared with the Euro, where the two highest and two lowest tokens...

There is a growing body of evidence that interest rate spreads in Africa are higher for big banks compared to small banks. One concern is that big banks might be using their market power to charge higher lending rates as they become larger, more efficient, and unchallenged. In contrast, several...

Human communication in organizations often involves a large amount of gossiping about others. Here we study in an experiment whether gossip affects the efficiency of human interactions. We let subjects play a trust game. Third parties observe a trustee's behavior and can gossip about it by...

We study equitable allocation of indivisible goods and money among agents with other-regarding preferences. First, we argue that Foley's (1967) equity test, i.e., the requirement that no agent prefer the allocation obtained by swapping her consumption with another agent, is suitable for our...

A numbers of studies focusing on the determinant of the insurance market efficiency haveincreased in the last decade. In fact, many factors, like the CEO's power, can influence the efficiency in the insurance firm. The purpose of this research is to analyze the relationship between efficiency,...

We study a setting where anti-discrimination legislation gives rise to adverse selection in the labor market. Firms rely on nonlinear compensation contracts to screen workers who differ in their family/career orientation. This results in a labor market equilibrium where career-oriented workers...

We study a setting where anti-discrimination legislation gives rise to adverse selection in the labor market. Firms rely on nonlinear compensation contracts to screen workers who differ in their family/career orientation. This results in a labor market equilibrium where career-oriented workers...

Human communication in organizations often involves a large amount of gossiping about others. Here we study in an experiment whether gossip affects the efficiency of human interactions. We let subjects play a trust game. Third parties observe a trustee's behavior and can gossip about it by...

We stress some efficiency aspects of monopolistic competition justifying it on account of its tendency to innovate and the questionable excess capacity paradigm. Some further efficiency aspects revealed are product variety and transaction cost savings. We view the monopolistically competitive...

This paper studies the aggregate and distributional implications of introducing tuition fees for public education services into a tax system with income and consumption taxes. The setup is a neoclassical growth model where agents differ in capital holdings. We show that the introduction of...

In the past decades, hospitals have been facing pressure to increase the efficiency of resource allocation. One way to achieve higher levels of technical efficiency is to treat more patients with the same amount of personnel, which could potentially lead to a trade-off between improving...

The paper discusses the European Union as a union of primarily small European states, a union whose parallel emphasis on efficiency and fairness, including deep respect for human rights, holds the key to Europe's economic and social advances over the years. The paper shows that adjusting...

In this study, we developed an inference procedure for the neural network using the bootstrap approach, and applied it to the market efficiency of the Nigerian exchange rate. Data used are exchange rate values from 2001 to 2015. We conducted a test on the market efficiency hypothesis, including...

This paper investigates the efficiency of the public sector in a sense of public performance and expenditures. For 23 European countries and for the period between 1995 and 2015 we construct a measure of public sector performance that consist of nine distinct indices for each area of public...

When analyzing what determines the efficiency of production, regressing efficiency scores estimated by DEA on explanatory variables has much intuitive appeal. Simar and Wilson (2007) show that this naïve two-stage estimation procedure suffers from severe flaws, that render its results, and in...

An ongoing debate in the literature on efficiency of higher education institutions concerns the indicator for research output in the empirical analysis. While several studies chose to use the number of publications, others rely on the overall amount of research grants. The present study...

In this paper we provide the first analysis of whether rushed privatizations, usually carried out under fiscal duress, increase or decrease firms' efficiency, scale of operation (size) and employment. Using a large panel of firm-level data from Poland over 1995-2015, we show that rushed...

This paper characterizes long-run and short-run optimal fiscal policy in the labor selection framework. In a calibrated non-Ramsey decentralized equilibrium, labor market volatility is inefficient. Keeping fixed the structural parameters, the Ramsey government achieves efficient labor market...

The principle of net neutrality was adopted by the European Union as a regulation promoting equality among all data packets in the Internet. Considering net neutrality from a purely economic viewpoint, however, the general possibility to prioritize data packets would likely lead to a more...

Das Prinzip der Netzneutralität wurde im November 2015 von der Europäischen Union als Verordnung zur Gleichbehandlung aller Datenpakete im Netz verabschiedet. Betrachtet man die Netzneutralität nach rein ökonomischen Gesichtspunkten, zeigt sich, dass die generelle Möglichkeit zur...

This paper characterizes long-run and short-run optimal fiscal policy in the labor selection framework. In a calibrated non-Ramsey decentralized equilibrium, labor market volatility is inefficient. Keeping fixed the structural parameters, the Ramsey government achieves efficient labor market...

Over the past decades the college sectors in the higher education systems of many Western countries have expanded their capacities massively. This happened even though colleges have been at a competitive disadvantage with universities which are publicly subsidized, while colleges must...

The increasing demand for speedy delivery of quality products at lower production cost have resulted to new trend in manufacturing to review the gap between input resources inventory and production output inventory. More so, creating competitive niche in the current market environment is now...

The paper reports on an experiment on two-player double-auction bargaining with private values. We consider a setting with discrete two-point overlapping distributions of traders' valuations, in which there exists a fully efficient equilibrium. We show that if there are traders that behave...

An ongoing debate in the literature on efficiency of higher education institutions concerns the indicator for research output in the empirical analysis. While several studies chose to use the number of publications, others rely on the overall amount of research grants. The present study...

When analyzing what determines the efficiency of production, regressing efficiency scores estimated by DEA on explanatory variables has much intuitive appeal. Simar and Wilson (2007) show that this nai͏̈ve two-stage estimation procedure suffers from severe flaws, that render its results, and...

We analyze a setting common in privatizations, public tenders, and takeovers in which the ex post efficient allocation, i.e., the first best, is not implementable. Our first main result is that the open ascending auction is not second best because it is prone to rushes, i.e., all active bidders...

We provide an axiomatic justification to aggregate money metrics. The key axiom requires the approval of richer-to-poorer transfers that preserve the overall efficiency of the distribution. This transfer principle - together with the basic axioms of anonymity, continuity, monotonicity, and a...

We present a pragmatic approach to calculating the total economic loss induced by a cartel, focusing on the European trucks cartel (1997-2011). Overall, we estimate a net welfare loss of approximately €0.7 bn. and an overcharge below 1% (€1.8 bn.). The cartel overcharge is surprisingly low....

In this paper we provide the first analysis of whether rushed privatizations, usually carried out under fiscal duress, increase or decrease firms' efficiency, scale of operation (size) and employment. Using a large panel of firm-level data from Poland over 1995-2015, we show that rushed...

The principle of net neutrality was adopted by the European Union as a regulation promoting equality among all data packets in the Internet. Considering net neutrality from a purely economic viewpoint, however, the general possibility to prioritize data packets would likely lead to a more...

This paper characterizes long-run and short-run optimal fiscal policy in the labor selection framework. In a calibrated non-Ramsey decentralized equilibrium, labor market volatility is inefficient. Keeping fixed the structural parameters, the Ramsey government achieves efficient labor market...

A large and growing share of hires in the United States are replacement hires. This increase coincides with a growing productivity-wage gap. We connect these trends by building a model where firms post long-lived vacancies and engage in on-the-job search for more productive workers. These...

This paper investigates the efficiency of the public sector in a sense of public performance and expenditures. For 23 European countries and for the period between 1995 and 2015 we construct a measure of public sector performance that consist of nine distinct indices for each area of public...

This study investigates the predictability of revisions to Euro-area major macroeconomic variables using real-time data from the European Central Bank. The application of nonparametric and semiparametric tests enables robust conclusions about the predictability of revisions. Though there is wide...

The unique capital structure of commercial banking - funding production with demandable debt that participates in the economy's payments system - affects various aspects of banking. It shapes commercial banks' comparative advantage in providing financial products and services to informationally...

This paper characterizes long-run and short-run optimal fiscal policy in the labor selection framework. In a calibrated non-Ramsey decentralized equilibrium, labor market volatility is inefficient. Keeping fixed the structural parameters, the Ramsey government achieves efficient labor market...