This paper presents a micro-econometric model testing for changes in firms' product and pricing decisions in two American industries where leading companies have sharply increased their financial leverage. According to the latest econometric theory, the empirical analysis is carried out through...

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have been successfully used as an industrial policy tool in many countries. Efforts to create SEZs in Tanzania began in 2002, and were stepped up through the establishment of the Export Processing Zone Authority (EPZA) in 2006. A number of state-run zones are now in...

Most contracts that individuals enter into are not written from scratch; rather, they depend upon forms and terms that have been successful in the past. In this paper, we study the structure of form construction contracts published by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). We show that...

Considerable evidence demonstrates that significant dispersion exists in the prices charged for seemingly homogeneous goods. This paper adopts a simple, flexible equilibrium model of search to investigate the way the market structure influences price dispersion. Using the noisy search approach,...

Although the volatility of house prices is often ascribed to demand-side factors, constraints on housing supply have important and little-studied implications for housing dynamics. I illustrate the strong relationship between the volatility of house prices and the regulation of new housing...

Die detaillierte Untersuchung von Unternehmensagglomerationen bzw. der räumlichen Ballung von Produktionsaktivitäten war ein wesentliches Analyseziel des Forschungsprojekts 'Die Bedeutung von Innovationsclustern, sektoralen und regionalen Innovationssystemen zur Stärkung der globalen...

Entropy was first glimpsed in 1824 when Sadi Carnot, son of the Prime Minister of France, observed that steam engines wasted 97% of their heat energy, and wondered how efficient they could be. An engine works by drawing in heat energy Hi from gasoline and exploding it at high temperature Ti,...

This safety-procurement tradeoff can be addressed by setting safety standards and then exempting selected activities and/or contractors. Or this tradeoff can be balanced by an informal or formal best-value point system that weighs, in each case, the relative value of contractor safety...

This study assesses the mean and volatility spillover effects of changes in food prices among a number of Asia and Pacific countries - Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and Thailand - including the USA as a special case using daily observations for 1995 to 2010....

Changes in exchange rates have become a prominent issue in Germany and Japan - due to the enormous appreciation of the Deutschmark and the Yen. Conventional wisdom suggests that economic activity will be negatively affected if a currency is going through a phase of appreciation. The paper...