This paper introduces the Small World model (Watts and Strogatz, Nature, 1998) into the theory of economic growth and investigates how increasing economic integration affects firm size and effciency, norm enforcement, and aggregate economic performance. When economic integration is low and local...

This paper introduces wealth-dependent time preference into a simplemodel of endogenous growth. The model generates adjustment dynamics in linewith the historical facts on savings and economic growth in Europe from the HighMiddle Ages to today. Along a virtuous cycle of development more wealth...

This paper proposes a model that links households and firms, as usual, by markets forfactors and goods and, additionally, by a banking sector that channels households’funds to firms and eliminates idiosyncratic risk. In equilibrium, agency costs and taxbenefits of corporate debt are equalizing...

Taxes on inheritances may induce heirs to discontinue family firms. Becausefirm dissolution incurs transaction costs, a preferential tax treatment of transferredfamily businesses seems to be desirable from a macroeconomic viewpoint.The support of dynastic succession, however, entails also a cost...

Does it make us unhappier when we compare our consumptionwith that of the Joneses or our own past achievements? This paper tries ananswer by bringing together two disparate literatures: the macro (growth)theory on habit formation and the applied literature related to the Easterlinparadox. Using...

This paper proposes a model of urban agglomeration in conjunction withimperfect competition and endogenous product R&D of firms. The qualityof differentiated manufacturing goods is a result of R&D services providedby research firms. Sectoral interactions are subject to spatially...

This paper gives an overview of different methodologies related to value chain analysis in thecontext of environment and trade research. Four major fields of methodologies are identified:Accounting of input-output flows, general equilibrium models, econometrics, and globalcommodity chain...

We develop a Wald type test to distinguish between long memory and ESTARnonlinearity by using a directed-Wald statistic to overcome the problem of restricted parametersunder the alternative. The test is derived from two basic model specificationswhere the first is the standard model based on an...

We have developed a new test against spurious long memory based on the invarianceof long memory parameter to aggregation. By using the local Whittleestimator, the statistic takes the supremum among combinations of paired aggregatedseries. Simulations show that the test performs good in nite...

Als Folge der jüngsten gesundheitspolitischen Reformen in Deutschland scheint ein Wan-del in der HIV-Versorgungsstruktur unumgänglich. Vor diesem Hintergrund widmeten sich im November 2008 unterschiedliche Interessenvertreter in einem Workshop der Identifikation und Diskussion zukünftiger...