Marx made significant contributions to macroeconomics, laying the grounds for both Keynes's theory of aggregate demand and Schumpeter's theory of creative destruction. His law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall parallels Alvin Hansen's theory of secular stagnation which has recently...

The digital revolution has led to a quantification of ever more areas of human life and society. At the same time, there is an explosion of the number of awards, which by their very nature are based on non-quantified performance. Will quantification take over completely, leading to...

The present work offers a review on two divergent schools of thought regarding the subject of money and highlights why understanding it is important to grasp the workings and nature of the concept of money. We adopt a spontaneous order perspective on social institutions, considering money as...

In this laboratory experiment we study the use of strategic ignorance to delegate real authority within a firm. A worker can gather information on investment projects, while a manager makes the implementation decision. The manager can monitor the worker. This allows her to better exploit the...

This paper surveys the recent literature on CEO compensation. The rapid rise in CEO pay over the past 30 years has sparked an intense debate about the nature of the pay-setting process. Many view the high level of CEO compensation as the result of powerful managers setting their own pay. Others...

Two trends have marked the politico-economic discussion in many industrialized countries in recent years. On the one hand, international production, workplace decentralization, shareholder orientation and generous manager remuneration have changed the face of firms in the primary economy. On the...

Standard economics omits the role of narratives (the stories that people tell themselves and others) when they make all kinds of decisions. Narratives play a role in understanding the environment; focusing attention; predicting events; motivating action; assigning social roles and identities;...

Since 2003 German hospitals are reimbursed according to diagnosis related groups (DRGs). Patient classification in neonatology is based inter alia on birth weight, with substantial discontinuities in reimbursement at eight different thresholds. These discontinuities create strong incentives to...

This paper examines the relationship between the credit constraints faced by a firm and the unit value prices of its exports. The paper modifies Arkolakisś (2010) model of trade with heterogeneous firms by introducing endogenous quality and credit constraints. The model predicts that tighter...

We examine the supply-side characteristics - unskilled labor, imported input intensity, dependence on inputs from China, production complexity - that determine different potential vulnerabilities of traded products to the COVID-19 pandemic. Relying on monthly exports at the product level by all...