Die Arbeit untersucht und vergleicht die Wirkung von Mindest- und Kombilöhnen (Lohnkostenzuschüsse und Transferzahlungen an Arbeitnehmer) in einem Arbeitsmarktmodell mit monopsonistischer Konkurrenz und freiem Marktzutritt für Firmen. Es wird die Wirkung beider Instrumente auf die Nutzen der...

The Commission on Graduate Education in Economics had raised several concerns regarding the role of mathematics in graduate training in economics (Krueger, 1991; Colander, 1998, 2005). This paper undertakes a detailed scrutiny of the notion of a utility function to motivate and describe the common...

The paper deals with two specific types of utility functions displaying decision maker's risk aversion at expressing the utility of monetary values. These functions are following: w(c) = 1 – e-x/R, u(x) = ln(x + R), where x is a monetary value and R is a constant expressing the degree of risk...

Die jungen Marktwirtschaften der Staaten Mittel- und Osteuropas streben nach der Mitgliedschaft in der Europäischen Union.Bereits im April 1998 werden erste Beitrittsverhandlungen mit fünf Ländern aus der Region beginnen. Die ökonomischeProblematik einer Integration der Reformländer in den...

In this paper we develop a spatial Cournot trade model with two unequally sized countries, using the geographical interpretation of the Hotelling line. We analyze the trade and welfare effects of international trade between these two countries. The welfare analysis indicates that in this...

One of the fundamental normative questions within international trade theory is whether free trade is better than autarky and, if so, in what sense and to what extent. Surprisingly, the literature contains just a few formal models constructed under discrete time and investigating the...

The idea of a flat tax, a tax levied at a single rate, has become an increasingly discussed and implemented fiscal strategy across Europe and the rest of the world. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania adopted flat tax systems in 1994 and 1995, making them the first modern countries to adopt flat...

This thesis explores the important link between macroeconomic dynamics and the financial sector. The first essay studies Epstein-Zin preferences, which are found to be able to account for both aggregate macroeconomic dynamics and asset prices. In the first essay, I compare different solution...