The user cost elasticity is a parameter of considerable importance in economics, with implications for the effects of budget deficits, tax-based savings incentives, monetary policy, corporate taxes, and tariffs and quotas on capital goods. This paper analyzes the econometric issues that account...

This paper explores individual motives for volunteering: The analysis is based on the interpretation of volunteering as a consumption good (consumption model) or as a mean to increase individual’s own human capital (investment model). We present an econometric framework taking into account...

Microborrowers may take usurious loans to repay a loan taken from a micro nance institution because of having neglected the time inconsistency of optimal plans or having discounted future payoffs too strongly from the ex-post perspective. Microfinance programs should strive at preventing such...

This paper contributes to the empirical literature on the relationship between environmental regulation and firm behavior. In particular, we ask whether and how strongly investment decisions of firms respond to stringency in environmental regulation. Environmental stringency is measured as (i)...

The aim of this paper is twofold: one, it analyzes the dynamic factor adjustment patterns and performance changes of firms in response to periods of rapid adjustment of capital, labor, production and non-production labor; and, two, it sheds light on the role of firm characteristics on the...

Rebuilding the capital stock will play the decisive role in the adjustment process in the eastern German economy. Investment increased from DM 92 billion in 1991 to 157 billion in 1994 (in current prices). It amounted to 60 percent of GDP. Investment has been heavily concentrated in buildings;...

Im letzten Bericht der Institute vom Frühjahr 1996 wurde darauf verwiesen, daß sich erste Erfolge bei der geld- und fiskalpolitischen Stabilisierung noch nicht in realwirtschaftlichen Impulsen niedergeschlagen hatten. Die Institute hatten insbesondere auf die ausgeprägte Investitionsschwäche...

Mexico's recent financial crisis, culminating in December 1994, threatens the positive effects of the substantial reforms that the country has implemented since 1985 by opening its real sector: first trade has been liberalized unilaterally, then Mexico has joined the GATT, the Uruguay Round, the...