We show that a minimum wage introduced in the presence of asymmetric information about worker productivities will lead to lower unemployment levels than predicted by the standard labour market model with heterogeneous labour and symmetric information.

This paper deals with alternative policy options for tackling congestion and environmental problems in the German airport sector. The starting point of the discussion is the planned privatisation of several airports in Germany, which is normally justified on productive efficiency grounds....

Germany remains Europe's largest and most diversified source of new technology, but still lags in the fastest growing areas of today's high technology. After World War II, West-German technology policy sought to rebuild the institutions which had supported Germany's leadership in the high-tech...

This paper aims at describing the choices to be made in selecting and implementing a reform model for the electricity industry and to derive some implications for the situation in Kosovo. The paper argues that the appropriate reform model depends on the circumstances in the considered...

Recent advances in telecommunications, particularly using fibre technologies, permit many services based on data-processing to be performed anywhere in the world. They thus become tradable and subject to the laws of comparative advantage. A good example is data-processing within large...

The twenty-five years after WW 2 witnessed strong labour market institutions and beneficial labour market outcomes - high wage growth and integration of low-skilled immigrants. Then came the macro shocks of the mid 1970s. Labour market outcomes deteriorated as full-time employment population...

This paper presents a set of panel data to study the diffusion of retail checkout barcode scanning in ten European countries over the period 1981-1996. Estimates from a standard diffusion model suggest that countries differ most in the long-run diffusion level of barcode scanning and less in...

Die im vorliegenden Regierungsentwurf angestrebte Liberalisierung der Stromwirtschaft beinhaltet die Schaffung eines Durchleitungsmodells unter grundsätzlicher Partizipation aller Endkundenkategorien. Widerstand gegen den Regierungsentwurf formiert sich insbesondere in den Reihen der kommunalen...

Gegenstand des Beitrages sind die Umstrukturierungen der Stromwirtschaft in Kalifornien. Im Gefolge der Entwicklungen auf der Bundesebene - dem Energy Policy Act von 1992 und der neueren Politik der Federal Energy Regulatory Commission - hat die kalifornische Regulierungskommission Maßnahmen...

Am 24. April 1996 veröffentlichte die Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) die endgültigen Regulierungsvorschriften nach den Bestimmungen des Energy Policy Act (EPAct) von 1992. Diese Vorschriften schaffen für den Wettbewerb im Großhandel mit Strom grundlegend neue Rahmenbedingungen....