This paper critically analyses the proposed law for regulating the rental housing market. The swiss tenants have made mostly negative experiences with the rate of return regulation practiced in the last 20 years. Nevertheless, the new law does not address these problems. If the new proposed law...

Diese Arbeit besteht aus drei zusammengehörigen Essays, die eine theoretische Grundlage für Untersuchungen multilateraler Verhandlungen und strategischer Investitionen in drei unterschiedlichen Umgebungen liefert. Die vorgestellten Methoden werden angewandt um Entwicklungen in der eurasischen...

It is widely believed that rent-sharing reduces the incentives for investment when long term contracts are infeasible because some of the returns to sunk capital are captured by workers. We propose a simple test for the degree of hold-up based on the fraction of capital costs that are deducted...

We analyze how investment into the pipeline system supplying Russian natural gas to WesternEurope is distorted for strategic reasons. We use a two stage multilateral bargaining game amongheterogenous players, some lacking the ability to make long-term commitments. At the first stagethe players...

The paper deals with the search for optimal slack grade conditions. The evaluation of the optimal slack grade takes into account the relationship be-tween slack and organizational performance and efficiency measures of re-source allocation. Organization and behavioural theory deliver some...

In this dissertation I focus on two considerations that influence the product strategy of a firm. The first is consumers’ choice and its influence on a firm’s product offering, and the second is the interaction between durable products and their contingent consumables. First, I study the...

Economics

In this paper we present a search and matching model in which firms invest in sunk capital equipment. By comparing two wage setting scenarios, we show that a two-tier bargaining scheme, where a fraction of the salary is negotiated at firm level, raises the amount of investment per worker in the...

Based on data from a comprehensive benchmarking study on buyer-supplier relationships in the German automotive industry, we show that more trust in a relationship is associated with higher idiosyncratic investment by suppliers and better part quality - but also with more competition among...

Recently, Blanchard and Kremer (BK) argued that disorganization has led to the output decline in the former Soviet Union. In this paper we introduce liquidity and credit constraints into the BK model and show how these problems can alleviate the hold-up problem. We argue further that barter...