We demonstrate the possibility of shake-out of firms and emergence of inter-firm heterogeneity along the (socially optimal) dynamic equilibrium path of a competitive industry with free entry and exit, even when there is no uncertainty and all firms are ex ante identical with perfect foresight....

With tightening budgets and increasingly critical reviews of public expenditure, there is a need for a careful analysis of the performance of public bodies in terms of an efficient execution of their tasks. These questions show up everywhere in the public domain, for instance, in the provision...

In this paper two kernel-based nonparametric estimators are proposed for estimating the components of an additive quantile regression model. The first estimator is a computationally convenient approach which can be viewed as a viable alternative to the method of De Gooijer and Zerom (2003). By...

We apply a recently proposed method to disentangle unobserved heterogeneity from risk in returns to education. We replicate the original study on US men and extend to US women, UK men and German men. Most original results are not robust. A college education cannot universally be considered an...

We model and measure simultaneous large losses of the market value of insurers to understand the impact of shocks on the insurance sector. The downside risk of insurers is explicitly modelled by common and idiosyncratic risk factors. Since reinsurance is important for the capacity of insurers,...

A sequence of real numbers (<I>x_n</I>) is Benford if the significands, i.e. the fraction

This paper gives an overview and evaluates the literature on Microfoundations.<P>

Despite the mixed empirical evidence, many economists still hold to the view that Internet will promote competition between firms, thereby lowering prices and increasing economic welfare. This paper presents a search model that provides a different view. We analyze the market for a homogeneous...

This paper studies the incentives to merge in a Bertrand competition model where firms sell differentiated

This paper is the first to examine the effect of minimum price guarantees