Recently, early investments in the human capital of children from socially disadvantaged environments have attracted a great deal of attention. In a discrete version of the Mirrlees model with a parents' and a children's generation we show the intra-generational and the inter-generational...

Annual, before-tax income is the most common official statistic used to measure economic well-being and therefore underlies the design of most anti-poverty programs or other redistributive economic policies. Notwithstanding, extended income measures as well as consumption based measures are...

It's puzzling that most projects fail to complete within the predetermined timeframe given that timing considerations rank among the major goals in project management. We argue that when managers can extract private benefits from working on a project, project delay becomes optimal. We introduce...

I analyze the long-term labor market returns after completing a higher education entrance (HEE) qualification as a qualified worker older than age 20 (Zweiter Bildungsweg), using data of the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). I use a Mincer-type equation, where the school-leaving...

This paper discusses the central macroeconomic claims that are made in Thomas Piketty's book 'Capital in the Twenty-first Century'. The paper aims to show that Piketty's contentions are not only logically flawed but also contradicted by his own data.

The question of whether migration can be an equilibrating force in the labour market is an important criterion for an optimal currency area. It is of particular interest currently in the context of high and rising levels of labour market disparities, in particular within the Eurozone where there...

While the worldwide spread of smartphones continues, developing countries have become important markets for these devices. Smartphones´ independence of landline networks qualifies them for communication and Internet access in rural areas of developing countries. Drawing upon rural Southeast...

This paper sets up a two-period, two-sector trade model of a developing country which is abundant in a natural resource but scarce in industrial goods. It shows that lower future travel costs, rising demand for tourism and higher preferences for the environment slow down today´s depletion of...

We study the problem of determining both the structure and the schedule of projects subject to capacity constraints. We assume that those projects are flexible in the sense that the activities to be implemented are not entirely known in advance. In such a setting, decisions must be made with...

Climate policy negotiations identi ed international technology funding as a means of achieving carbon emissions reductions in developing countries. Such funds are now being realized. This paper is probably the first theory-based discussion of international technology funding. It sets up a Ramsey...