This paper considers moral hazard insurance markets when voluntary monitoring technologies are available and insureds may choose the precision of monitoring. Also privacy costs incurred thereby are taken into account. Two alternative contract schemes are compared in terms of welfare: (i)...

It is well known that uncertainty concerning firms' costs as well as market power of the latter have to be taken into account in order to design and choose environmental policy instruments in an optimal way. As a matter of fact, in the most actual environmental regulation settings the policy...

We provide a model to study the effect of improving the quality of the filters that users use, and the increase of the cost of mailing spam messages, on the total number of messages that spammers send. We show that increasing the cost of mailing spam messages have the unequivocal effect of...

Many communities are concerned about the reuse of potentially contaminated land (brownfields) and believe that environmental liability is a hindrance to redevelopment. However, with land price adjustments, liability might not impede the reuse of this land. Existing literature has found price...

Recent advances in the economics of knowledge highlight the key role of pecuniary knowledge externalities in explaining the system dynamics of total factor productivity growth. When non-exhaustible technological knowledge is an input both in the production of new goods and of further knowledge,...

Within a standard gravity framework I explore the impact of country size and trade liberalisation on extensive and intensive margins of imports across broad categories of goods. This allows testing hypotheses from two distinct strands of the trade literature, i.e., vertical integration versus...

We study the impact of the Austrian Employment Act for the Disabled which grants extended employment protection, requires a hiring quota for firms, and subsidizes the employment of severely disabled (SD) workers. Using a large sample of eligible individuals we compare workers before and after...

The model of compensating differentials in regional labor markets was developed by Roback (1982). The model interprets regional differences in constant quality wages and rents as compensating firms and residents for inter-regional differences in amenities. The model assumes that the costs of...

This paper analyzes the effect of firing costs on aggregate productivity growth. For this purpose, a model of endogenous growth through selection and imitation is developed. It is consistent with recent evidence on firm dynamics and on the importance of reallocation for productivity growth. In...

We study the effects of liquidity constraints and start-up costs on the relationship between wealth and the fraction of entrepreneurs in an economy. We develop a dynamic occupational choice model with endogenous wealth and entry into entrepreneurship. The model predicts that, with liquidity...