In a duopoly industry with environmentally differentiated products, we examine the effects of introducing a mandatory environmental quality standard on firms' environmental quality choices, profits, and the average environmental quality offered by the industry. We show that at low standard...

Die anhaltend hohe Arbeitslosigkeit hat verstärkt zu Diskussionen geführt, ob das Steuer-Transfer-System hierfür mitverantwortlich sei. Dabei wurde insbesondere auf die sehr hohe implizite Grenzbelastung im untersten Einkommensbereich hingewiesen. Als Alternativen wurden eine negative...

We propose inference procedures for partially identified population features for which the population identification region can be written as a transformation of the Aumann expectation of a properly defined set valued random variable (SVRV). An SVRV is a mapping that associates a set (rather...

A correlated equilibrium for a normal form game is a mediator whose recommendations the players find optimal to follow obediently. A (direct) correlation device or a mediator however may face the multiple equilibrium problem as the obedient strategy profile may be dominated by some other Nash...

Foreign aid donors and recipient governments often have conflicting objectives. Foreign donors may attempt to influence the policies of recipient governments by offering aid or threatening to suspend aid to sovereign states. This paper considers the credibility of such inducements and the...

The apparently unrelenting growth in the GDP-share of health spending (SHS) has been a perennial issue of policy concern. Does an equilibrium limit exist? The issue has been left open in recent dynamic models which take income growth and population aging as given. We view these variables as...

We propose an equilibrium concept, the Robust Nash equilibrium (RNE), that combines the best-reply rationality and the first mover invariance condition. The single-stage 2x2 symmetric information game G is transformed into sequential two-stage games with two sub-trees: STA has the row player...

A comparative-static model describes the decline of manufacturing in the face of rising overseas employment through a mechanism other than the Dutch Disease. Instead it is competition for skilled labour and the relative ease in producing skills that affect the size of the manufacturing sector,...

International financial linkages, particularly through global bank flows, generate important questions about the consequences for economic and financial stability, including the ability of countries to conduct autonomous monetary policy. I address the monetary autonomy issue in the context of...

U.S. households' debt skyrocketed between 2000 and 2007, but has since been falling. This leveraging and deleveraging cycle cannot be accounted for by the liberalization and subsequent tightening of mortgage credit standards that occurred during the period. We base this conclusion on a...