Suchergebnisse

Collective dismissal costs are an important part of employment protection legislation (EPL) and make firms' exit more costly. We show in a model with step-by-step innovations that dismissal costs spur innovation if product markets are not too competitive: technologically more advanced firms endogenously exit with smaller probability so that there is a dynamic incentive to innovate. But dismissal costs decrease the absolute value of firms and induce exit. These opposite effects and their dependence on the policy mix of EPL and product market regulation explain why empirical studies have difficulties to find a negative effect of EPL on innovation.

This paper contributes to the debate on the effects of trade versus technological change on wage differentials. We propose an explanation of the stylized facts which is based on interactions between openness and technological change because of labor market institutions and government intervention. In particular, technology change is induced by rigid wage elements for a developed economy which is trading with less developed countries. With a binding minimum wage and given commodity prices, openness induces the government to subsidize technological innovation in the developed country because production activities in the sector hit by foreign competition would have to close down otherwise. The economy with a binding minimum wage and institutionally induced innovations differs from the flexible economy in the following way: ? The wage differential becomes more compressed the higher the minimum wage. Not only the wage of the unskilled is higher, but also the wage of the skilled is lower. ? The productivity of unskilled workers is higher in the sector intensive in its use. ? Skill intensity within the unskilled-labor intensive sector can rise although the wage of the skilled rises as well. This perspective may explain why empirical studies have difficulties to find substantial effects of openness on wage differentials although product markets have become increasingly integrated. Moreover, it can explain why the volume of trade between developed and less-developed countries is relatively small. Finally our model yields predictions for developed countries with different labor market institutions that are consistent with empirical evidence.

This paper quantifies the extent of heterogeneity in consumption responses to changes in real interest rates and house prices in the four largest economies in the euro area: France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. We first calibrate a life-cycle incomplete-markets model with a liquid financial asset and illiquid housing to match the large heterogeneity of households asset portfolios, observed in the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) for these countries. We then show that the heterogeneity in household finances implies that responses of consumption to changes in the real interest rate and in house prices differ substantially across the analyzed countries, and across age groups within these countries. The different consumption responses quantified in this paper point towards important heterogeneity in monetary-policy transmission within the euro area. ; The ADEMU Working Paper Series is being supported by the European Commission Horizon 2020 European Union funding for Research & Innovation, grant agreement No 649396.

This paper documents facts about differences in household portfolio composition across European countries, using the Eurosystem's Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) as a data source. On the asset side of balance sheets, the focus of our analysis is on the distinction between housing wealth and other assets. On the liability side, we distinguish types of debt which are collateralized by housing. As a consequence, this paper addresses cross-European differences in home-equity positions. These facts inform the design of a European Household Finance Common Reference Model (HFCRM). This reference model identifies a common structure of key factors in household financial decision making. At the same time the HFCRM is flexible enough to admit parameterizations which fit the diversity of financial and legal institutions across European countries. ; The ADEMU Working Paper Series is being supported by the European Commission Horizon 2020 European Union funding for Research & Innovation, grant agreement No 649396.

We analyze the general equilibrium of an economy in which a competitive industry produces nonexclusive insurance services. The equilibrium is inefficient because insurance contracts cannot control moral hazard, and welfare can be improved by policies that reduce insurance by increasing its price above marginal cost. We discuss how insurance production costs that exceed expected claim payments interact with moral hazard in determining the equilibrium's inefficiency, and show that these costs can make insurance premia so actuarially unfair as to validate the standard first‐order conditions we exploit in our analysis.

We characterize optimal redistribution in a dynastic family model with human capital. We show how a government can improve the trade-off between equality and incentives by changing the amount of observable human capital. We provide an intuitive decomposition for the wedge between human-capital investment in the laissez faire and the social optimum. This wedge differs from the wedge for bequests because human capital carries risk: its returns depend on the non-diversifiable risk of children's ability. Thus, human capital investment is encouraged more than bequests in the social optimum if human capital is a bad hedge for consumption risk.

We characterize optimal redistribution in a dynastic family model with human capital. We show how a government can improve the trade-off between equality and incentives by changing the amount of observable human capital. We provide an intuitive decomposition for the wedge between human-capital investment in the laissez faire and the social optimum. This wedge differs from the wedge for bequests because human capital carries risk: its returns depend on the non-diversifiable risk of children's ability. Thus, human capital investment is encouraged more than bequests in the social optimum if human capital is a bad hedge for consumption risk.

We characterize optimal redistribution in a dynastic family model with human capital. We show how a government can improve the trade-off between equality and incentives by changing the amount of observable human capital. We provide an intuitive decomposition for the wedge between human-capital investment in the laissez faire and the social optimum. This wedge differs from the wedge for bequests because human capital carries risk: its returns depend on the non-diversi…able risk of children's ability. Thus, human capital investment is encouraged more than bequests in the social optimum if human capital is a bad hedge for consumption risk.