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Terrorism and International Trade: An Empirical Investigation

This paper examines the effect of terrorism and warfare on international trade. We investigate bilateral trade flows between more than 200 countries over the period from 1960 to 1993. Applying an augmented gravity model that includes several measures of terrorism and large-scale violence, we find compelling evidence that terrorist actions reduce the volume of trade; a doubling in the number of terrorist ...

Games of Climate Change with International Trade

We analyse games of greenhouse gas emission reduction in which the emissions and the emission reduction costs of one country depend on other countries' emission abatement. In an analytically tractable model, we show that international trade effects on costs and emissions can either increase or decrease incentives to reduce emissions and to cooperate on emission abatement; in some specifications, optimal ...

Der Einfluss von Persönlichkeitseigenschaften und sozialen Ressourcen auf die Arbeitslosigkeitsdauer

Vertical Foreclosure versus Downstream Competition with Capital Precommitment

The recent literature on vertical foreclosure suggests that vertical integration can have the anticompetitive effect of enabling an upstream firm to commit to restricting output to downstream firms at the monopoly level. We allow the upstream firm to make an ex-ante capital precommitment. We show that, if integration is outlawed, the upstream firm will distort capital downward as an alternative device ...

In the Aftermath of Dresden: New Directions in German Flood Insurance

The German flood disaster of summer 2002 highlighted a dilemma concerning insurance against damages caused by natural forces. On the one hand, mindful of the rising incidence of natural disasters, private insurance companies are increasingly withdrawing coverage against natural catastrophes such as wind storms and floods. On the other, the availability of emergency relief and private donations is systematically ...

A State Space Model for Berlin House Prices: Estimation and Economic Interpretation

Hedonic regression has become the standard approach for modeling the behavior of house prices. Usually, the common price component is modeled via dummy variables. Based on an approximation for the present value, we deliver an economic interpretation of the common price component. This allows to include explanatory factors like inflation rates, mortgage rates and building permissions. The notional rents ...

Pitfalls in Restructuring the Electricity Industry

This paper models some reductions in output that may follow the opening of electricity markets to competition. Specifically, we show that vertical separation of electricity generation, transmission and distribution could reduce welfare compared to the previous system of vertically integrated monopoly, if grid owners can act as monopolistic retailers or, alternatively, set access prices that maximize ...

The Impact of Ageing on Hospital Care and Long-Term Care: The Example of Germany

Background: In the next few decades the population in all EU-countries will age rapidly. This could have a major impact on the health care sector. This study analyses the effect of population ageing on utilisation in two key sectors of the health care system, namely hospital care and long-term care in Germany, up to 2020 with an outlook to 2050. Methods: Two population scenarios, one with constant, ...

Fiscal Federalism in Transition: Evidence from Ukraine

Effects of fiscal federalism on redistribution and economic growth are analyzed for Ukraine, a country with large regional differences. Since there is virtually no such empirical literature, except a study of the German case, and since there are several potential flaws, the results must be interpreted in a very tentative way. We find that this relatively poor, disorganized country with little democracy ...

Economic Integration, Wage Policies, and Social Policies

This paper sets up a two country monopolistic competition model with intra-industry trade to study the effects of an exogenous differential in wage and social policies on the location of industry. Two model scenarios are considered. In the traditional one with physical capital, such a differential induces a relocation effect which increases with the level of trade integration. The 'new economic geography' ...