In this thesis it is analyzed if promoting product market competition can help to to fight unemployment in Europe. We have used a general equilibrium model in order to study how reducing mark-ups and increasing productivity in one sector affect aggregate unemployment for an exogenously given...

A methodology is offered which can be used to construct an econometric model in the presence of structural change of an evolutionary type. The theoretical basis for such modelling is drawn from the self-organisation approach and operationalised in the context of the logistic diffusion growth...

The record price development in commodity markets during the economic boom period lasting from early 2000 to mid 2008 highlighted a perceived scarcity particularly in metal markets that contrasted the preceding period beginning in the late 1970s of largely abundant availability and falling real...

We consider misconceptions about the functioning of the economy as one possible explanation for the emergence of crises in democracies. Furthermore, we study a political process which may lead to successful reform. First of all, we show that voters can make inefficient decisions concerning...

General financial models have become workhorse models in the fields of macroeconomics and finance. These models have been developed and extensively studied by general equilibrium theorists. What makes them so applicable for macroeconomics and finance is the well accepted fact that models with a...

We quantify the effect of financial leverage on stock return volatility in a dynamic general equilibrium economy with debt and equity claims. The effect of financial leverage is studied both at a market and a firm level where the firm is exposed to both idiosyncratic and market risk. In a...

This paper studies the causes and consequences of racial segregation using a new general equilibrium model that treats neighborhood compositions as endogenous. The model is estimated using unusually detailed restricted Census microdata covering the entire San Francisco Bay Area, and in...

The current obesity crisis in the United States is generating numerous alternative policy options for combating the problem. One alternative that has been widely proposed is an excise or sales tax on sugar-sweetened non-alcoholic beverages. This literature started out within a very simple...

This paper first describes the new literature in environmental economics on the socalled "double dividend" and then explores its implications for a broad range of economic issues. The basic finding in this literature is that in a second-best, general equilibrium setting, environmental measures...