Browsing by Type "discussion paper"
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PublicationA Caseworker Like Me -Does The Similarity Between Unemployed And Caseworker Increase Job Placments?This paper examines whether the chances of job placements improve if unemployed persons are counselled by caseworkers who belong to the same social group, defined by gender, age, education, and nationality. Based on an unusually informative dataset, which links Swiss unemployed to their caseworkers, we find positive employment effects of about 4 percentage points if caseworker and unemployed belong to the same social group. Coincidence in a single characteristic, e.g. same gender of caseworker and unemployed, does not lead to detectable effects on employment. These results, obtained by statistical matching methods, are confirmed by several robustness checks.Type: discussion paper
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PublicationA note on the common support problem in applied evaluation studies( 2001-01-01)Not available in German. This paper advocates the use of a nonparametric bounds analysis to check the robustness of the results of applied evaluation studies to the problem of a lack of common support. The typical responses by researchers of either ignoring it, or obtaining estimates only for the subpopulation within the common support, can both be misleading: Ignoring the problem may result in biases because the comparison group may not be comparable. Deleting observations at best yields an estimator that is consistent for the common support. When treatment effects are heterogeneous inside and outside the common support this estimator does is inconsistent. Furthermore, useful information is ignored, because the response of the treated to the treatment can be estimated even outside the common support. This information can be used to derive bounds with width depending on the configuration of the data. The application to an evaluation study of Swiss active labour market policies shows that the relevance of the bounds for changing the interpretation of the results depends very much on the particular data configuration. Download Discussion Paper: (pdf, 264 kb)Type: discussion paper
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PublicationA Note on the Relation of Weighting and Matching Estimators(University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series, 2007-09-01)This paper compares the inverse-probability-of-selection-weighting estimation principle with the matching principle and derives conditions for weighting and matching to identify the same and the true distribution, respectively. This comparison improves the understanding of the relation of these estimation principles and allows constructing new estimators.Type: discussion paperIssue: 2007-34
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PublicationA Potential Outcome Approach to Dynamic Programme Evaluation: Nonparametric Identification( 2001-05-15)Miquel, RuthThis paper approaches the problem of an econometric evaluation of dynamic programme sequences from an potential outcome perspective. The identifying power of several different assumptions about the connection between the dynamic selection process and the potential outcomes of different programme sequences is discussed. The assumptions invoke different types of randomisation compatible with different selection regimes. Parametric forms are not involved. When participation in the sequences is decided every period depending on the success in the past, the resulting endogeneity problem destroys nonparametric identification for many parameters of interest, so that several dynamic versions of the average treatment effects on the treated parameter are not identified. However, some interesting dynamic forms of the average treatment effect are still identified. We also present a bounds analysis to learn from the data as much as possible, even when parts of the identifying assumptions are violated.Type: discussion paperIssue: 2001-07
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PublicationA Renegotiation Perspective on Transatlantic Trade Disputes( 2002-01-01)Roitinger, AlexanderTransatlantische Handelskonflikte stellen in den Augen zahlreicher Beobachter ein wachsendes Problem dar. Nach weit verbreiteter Einschätzung führen sie zu regelrechten Handelskriegen und beeinträchtigen die Glaubwürdigkeit des Streitschlichtungsmechanismus der WTO. In unserem Papier zeigen wir auf, dass solche Schlussfolgerungen ungerechtfertigt sind. Die Verletzung von WTO-Verträgen durch Mitgliedstaaten und die Nichtumsetzung von Beschlüssen der Streitschlichtungsbehörde sollten als Instrument zur Neuverhandlung betrachtet werden. Dieses Instrument hat spezifische Eigenschaften und sorgt dafür, dass das Welthandelssystem ein ausreichendes Mass an Flexibilität aufweist. Flexibilität ist notwendig einerseits aufgrund unvollständiger Verträge und andererseits aufgrund "lokal" fehlender allseitiger Zustimmung zum Vertragswerk im Zeitpunkt der Unterzeichnung. Download des ganzen Papiers als PDF-Datei (164kb)Type: discussion paperIssue: Nr. 2002-09
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PublicationA Review of Human Capital Theory: Microeconomics(University of St. Gallen, Department of Economics, 2007-01-01)Fleischhauer, Kai-JosephWith the beginning of the new millennium it has become more and more apparent that education and human capital constitute a key element of modern economies. Despite the important role of human capital in modern societies, there are still many unknowns about the process of educational production as well as individual and collective decisions concerning how much and what kind of education to obtain. Chapter 1 of my PhD thesis aims at providing a better understanding of the process of human capital formation and educational attainment. Although human capital plays an important role in both microeconomics and macroeconomics, we focus on the former branch of literature in order to analyze the individual incentives to acquire skills. This literature review is divided into six parts each of them representing an important topic of human capital literature. First, we introduce the basic concept of human capital that models individuals as investing in skills in response to the expected returns to education. After this, we investigate the different implications of investments in general and specific human capital and then provide an overview of various empirical studies measuring the rate of return to education. Because educational attainment may also be affected by other factors such as school characteristics or family background, we review the literature on educational production functions and discuss the significance of potential inputs into the process of educational production. Subsequently, we refer to models of human capital accumulation over the life-cycle that manage to replicate the empirical life-cycle patterns concerning the age-earnings profile of individuals. Finally, we analyze the effects of taxation and education subsidies on human capital formation.Type: discussion paperIssue: 2007-01
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PublicationA Simple Model of Educational Production( 2006-02-01)There is a large body of literature on the effect of educational resources on student performance, such as teacher qualification, class size, and physical resources in school. It is dominated by empirical studies which often find ambiguous effects of resource spending on student outcomes. The unique contribution of this paper is the provision of a framework to study educational production with differentiated input factors, which allows for closed-form solutions. We try to interpret the empirical findings on the basis of a simple theoretical model of educational production: Class size, employed school resources and student effort are endogenously determined in order to account for differences in educational achievement. We also discuss the choice of integrated vs. segregated classes. Optimum class size and school quality increase with higher discipline, while in equilibrium overall classroom disruption is equal in all classes.Type: discussion paper
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PublicationA Simple Theory of Offshoring and ReshoringIn this study, we predict a pattern of offshoring and reshoring over the course of economic development. We achieve this, by extending Grossman and Rossi-Hansberg's (2008) model of offshoring in a simple way by assuming that offshoring requires both workers and capital in the offshored country. As a consequence, the accumulation of capital in the offshored country has two opposing effects on offshoring. On the one hand, it increases the wage rate of workers rendering offshoring less attractive. On the other hand, it decreases the rental price of capital rendering offshoring more attractive. Putting these two effects together, we analytically generate the inverted-U pattern of offshoring recently observed in China.
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PublicationA Systems Approach to Business Strategy : The Case of Chocolate Production(Institut für Betriebswirtschaft an der Universität St. Gallen, 2014-01-27)
;Boyarskaya, Tatiana -
PublicationA theory of communication in political campaigns( 2013-02-22)In this paper I develop a formal theory of campaign communications. Voters have priors about the quality of candidates' policies in the different policy issues and about the issues' relative importance. Candidates spend time or money (TV ads, public speeches, etc.) in an effort to influence voters' decision at the ballot. Influence has two simultaneous effects: (i) it increases the quality of the policy in the issue as perceived by the voters through policy advertising and (ii) it makes the issue more salient through issue priming, thereby increasing the issue's perceived importance. A strategy is an allocation of influence activities to the different issues or topics. I show conditions under which candidates' strategies converge or diverge, which issues - if any - will dominate the campaign, and under what conditions candidates are forced to focus on issues in which they are perceived to be weak. I develop a set of novel testable predictions and discuss the model's predictive power by example of the 2008 presidential campaign in the U.S.Type: discussion paperIssue: 2013-02
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PublicationAbstention because of Indifference and Alienation, and Its Consequences for Party Competition: A Simple Psychological Model( 2003-04-01)The basic idea behind this paper is that voters have to be able to distinguish the positions of the parties. Following Weber's Law this depends on the relative distance with respect to their own optimal position. Using such a measure a model of voter participation is developed which allows for abstention because of indifference as well as alienation. Two variants of this model are applied on a two parties contest: one where participation is proportional to the relative distance and another one where voters participate if this distance is above a certain convergence to the median voter's position.Type: discussion paperIssue: 2003-12
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PublicationAccess to Credit and Comparative Advantage( 2011-01-20)
;Egger, PeterAccess to external funds is crucial for the entry and expansion of entrepreneurial firms and the sectors they predominantly arise in. This paper reports four important results. First, comparative advantage is shaped by factor endowments as well as fundamental determinants of corporate finance. In particular, a larger equity ratio of firms and tough governance standards relax finance constraints, lead to entry of firms at the lower bound of the productivity distribution, and create an endogenous comparative advantage in sectors where entrepreneurial firms are clustered. Second, in such a setting, factor price equalization does not only depend on technological characteristics of goods production but also of financial intermediation. Third, a small degree of trade protection in the constrained sector can raise a country's welfare by relaxing finance constraints if terms of trade effects are small. Fourth, a small degree of protection of the financially dependent industry in a financially underdeveloped country might even raise world welfareType: discussion paper -
PublicationAfter School Care and Parents' Labor Supply( 2013-11-01)Thiemann, PetraDoes after-school care provision promote mothers' employment and balance the allocation of paid work among parents of schoolchildren? We address this question by exploiting variation in cantonal (state) regulations of after-school care provision in Switzerland. To establish exogeneity of cantonal regulations with respect to employment opportunities and preferences of the population, we restrict our analysis to confined regions along cantonal borders. Using semi-parametric instrumental variable methods, we find a positive impact of after-school care provision on mothers' full-time employment, but a negative impact on fathers' full-time employment. Thus, the supply of after-school care fosters a convergence of parental working hours.
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PublicationAIEST Consensus on tourism and travel in the SARS-CoV-2 era and beyond(AIEST International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism, 2021-10-13)
;Stettler, JürgType: discussion paper -
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PublicationAmbiguity Aversion and the Term Structure of Interest Rates( 2007-07-31)
;Gagliardini, Patrick ;Porchia, PaoloTrojani, FabioThis paper studies the term structure implications of a simple structural economy in which the representative agent displays ambiguity aversion, modeled by Multiple Priors Recursive Utility. Bond excess returns reflect a premium for ambiguity, which is observationally distinct from the risk premium of affine yield curve models. The ambiguity premium can be large even in the simplest logutility model and is non zero also for stochastic factors that have a zero risk premium. A calibrated low-dimensional two-factor economy with ambiguity is able to reproduce the deviations from the expectations hypothesis documented in the literature, without modifying in a substantial way the nonlinear mean reversion dynamics of the short interest rate. In this economy, we do not find any apparent tradeoffs between fitting the first and second moments of the yield curve and the large equity premium.Type: discussion paperIssue: 2007-29 -
PublicationAn Uncertainty-Based Explanation of SymmetricWe provide a re-foundation of the symmetric growth equilibrium character- izing the research sector of all vertical R&D-driven growth models. This result does not rely on the usual assumption of a symmetric expectation on the future per-sector R&D expenditure. Indeed, with this structure of expectations, returns in R&D are equalized, and agents turn out to be indi¤erent as to where targeting research: hence, the problem of the allocation of R&D investments across sec- tors is indeterminate. In line with the ?true?Schumpeterian perspective, we solve this indeterminacy by allowing for decision makers strictly uncertain about the future per-sector distribution of R&D e¤orts. By using the Gilboa-Schmeidler?s MEU decision rule, we prove that the symmetric structure of R&D investment is the unique rational expectations (RE) equilibrium compatible with uncertainty- averse agents adopting a maximin strategy.