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The paper analyses the implementation of voucher privatization in Russia in the framework of incentive theory. The central government needs the support of local privatization agencies. These agencies possess private knowledge concerning: a) their personal reform attitude; b) local privatization conditions. According to the trade‐off between rent extraction and efficiency, the speed of privatization (the efficiency goal) is constrained by the informational rents that the government must pay to local agents. Through voucher privatization, the government learns about local privatization conditions. Surprisingly, this additional information does not necessarily lead to more privatization. In fact, the government may even slow down reforms in order to save on bureaucrats' rents. This result of the model matches with the facts of Russian privatization in the period 1992–93.

We investigate a team setting in which workers have different degrees of commitment to the outcome of their work. We show that if there are complementarities in production and if the team manager has some information about team members, interventions that the manager undertakes in order to assure certain efforts may have destructive effects: they can distort the way workers perceive their fellow workers and they may also lead to a reduction of effort by those workers that care most about output. Moreover, interventions may hinder the development of a cooperative organizational culture in which workers trust each other. Thus, our framework provides some first insights into the costs and benefits of interventions in teams. It identifies that team governance is driven by the importance of tasks that cannot be monitored. The more important these tasks, the more likely it is that teams are empowered. -- Team work ; incentives ; informed principal ; intrinsic motivation

An lauten Expertenstimmen mangelt es in der Corona-Krise nicht, wohl aber an einem einheitlichen Gesamtbild. Über transparente Politikberatung und die Möglichkeiten globalen Wissens.

Inspiré par les tendances récentes du système universitaire en Europe, nous étudions des réformes partielles donnant aux universités le droit de sélectionner leurs étudiants mais pas le droit de percevoir des frais de scolarité. Donner aux universités le droit de sélectionner leurs étudiants devrait augmenter la productivité des étudiants sur le marché du travail car l'appariement du capital humain des enseignants et des étudiants serait meilleur. Cependant, dans des conditions réalistes, en absence de droit de percevoir des frais de scolarité, les incitations des universités à améliorer le capital humain des professeurs peuvent diminuer. JEL Codes : I2, I23

We establish the existence of strong media slant against foreign owners. Using a unique data set from nation-wide distributed quality newspapers in Germany, we find that a foreign firm that downsizes in Germany receives almost twice as much attention than a domestic firm. This quantitative slant is accompanied by qualitative slant; newspapers report in a more negative way about downsizing foreign than domestic firms. The slant is present in all quality newspapers, but it increases from right to left in the political spectrum. This is consistent with theory papers arguing that slant is an equilibrium phenomenon. The slant we document is a clean measure for economic xenophobia; however, not geared against migrants, but against foreign owners. The slant can be a substantial obstacle to FDI, as illustrated by case studies. Our results are likely to be a lower bound estimate, because Germans are rather globalization-friendly and we are looking at quality papers, not tabloids.

We introduce financial constraints in a theoretical analysis of illegal immigration. Intermediaries finance the migration costs of wealth-constrained migrants, who enter temporary servitude contracts to pay back the debt. These debt/labor contracts are more easily enforceable in the illegal than in the legal sector of the host country. Hence, when moving from the illegal to the legal sector becomes more costly, for instance, because of stricter deportation policies, fewer immigrants default on debt. This reduces the risks for intermediaries, who are then more willing to finance illegal migration. Stricter deportation policies may thus increase rather than decrease the ex ante flow of illegal migrants. We also show that stricter deportation policies worsen the skill composition of immigrants. While stricter border controls decrease overall immigration, they may also result in an increase of debt-financed migration.