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on Law and Economics |
| By: | Pramuan Bunkanwanicha; Yupana Wiwattanakantang |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates the mechanisms that ?firms use to get state favors. We focus on a less well studied but common mechanism: business owners seeking election to top office. Using Thailand as a research setting, we fi?nd that business owners who rely on government concessions or are wealthier are more likely to run for top office. Once in power the market valuation of their ?firms increases dramatically. Surprisingly, the owners' political power does not change their fi?rms' fi?nancing strategies. Instead, we show that business owners in top office use their policy decision powers to implement regulations and public policies favorable to their fi?rms. Such policies hinder not only domestic competitors but also foreign investors. As a result, connected fi?rms are able to seize more market share. |
| Keywords: | Trade credit, Bank-firm relationship, Unlisted firms |
| JEL: | G15 G34 G38 K23 |
| Date: | 2006–10 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hit:hitcei:2006-10&r=law |
| By: | Jens Høj |
| Abstract: | The aim of this paper is to construct indicators that measure the strength of policies aimed at preserving and promoting market competition by empowering antitrust and sectoral authorities. The indicators, which cover both general and sector-specific competition policies, extend previous OECD work covering economy-wide and sector-specific regulations that restrict competition and promote governance. It focuses on information for 2003 provided by a number of OECD sources. The results show relatively little variation in the overall indicator across countries, partly reflecting the convergence of competition policies across the OECD area over the past decade. However, inspection of individual elements reveals that enforcement efforts (both in terms of devoted resources and actually implemented sanctions) and policies in network industries vary considerably across countries. Thus, the main conclusion arising from this work is that member countries have been improving the general competition policy framework, but still have to fully implement the improved framework. Moreover, there remains a considerable scope for further progress in promoting competition in network industries. <P>Indicateurs de l'efficacité de la politique de la concurrence dans les pays de l'OCDE <BR>Ce document de travail présente la construction d'indicateurs mesurant l'impact des politiques qui encouragent le maintien et le développement de la concurrence des marchés en renforçant les autorités pro-concurrentielles et sectorielles. Ces indicateurs qui couvrent les politiques de concurrence au niveau global et sectoriel sont un prolongement des travaux précédents de l'OCDE concernant les restrictions de la concurrence dans l'économie au sens large ainsi que par secteur. Les indicateurs décrits ici sont construits à partir de données en provenance de sources de l'OCDE et concernent l'année 2003. L'indicateur le plus agrégé varie peu d’un pays à un autre, reflétant en partie la convergence des politiques pro-concurrentielles au sein de l’OCDE au cours de la dernière décennie. Une analyse plus détaillée montre cependant que les efforts de mise en oeuvre des régulations sur les marchés des biens et services (ressources allouées, sanctions prises) et les politiques concernant les industries de réseaux sont beaucoup plus variables. Au total, les pays membres ont certes mis en place des politiques pro-concurrentielles théoriquement bonnes, mais il reste encore à compléter leur mise en oeuvre. De plus, il subsiste de nombreux domaines, notamment dans les industries de réseau où l'amélioration de la concurrence peut grandement progresser. |
| Keywords: | politique de la concurrence, regulated industries, enforcement, product market competition, antitrust law, concurrence sur les marchés de biens |
| JEL: | K2 L5 |
| Date: | 2007–08–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:568-en&r=law |
| By: | Stefano Comino (Università di Trento,); Fabio Manenti (Università di Padova,); Antonio Nicolò (Università di Padova,) |
| Abstract: | We consider a cumulative innovation process in which a follow-on innovator invests in R&D activities that influence both the expected commercial value as well as the novelty of its innovation. When the second innovator investments are not servable,licensing of the first innovation never occurs efficiently, and, at the equilibrium, the follow-on innovator either underinvests or overinvests. We show that a large patent breadth may be harmful for the first innovator too, and therefore Pareto-dominated;as long as the undervinvestment problem becomes more pronounced, the value generated by the follow-on innovator reduces, and so do the licensing revenues of the first inventor. |
| Keywords: | sequential innovation, patents, licensing, intellectual property |
| JEL: | K3 L5 O3 |
| Date: | 2007–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pad:wpaper:0041&r=law |
| By: | Jorge Martinez-Vazquez; Benno Torgler |
| Abstract: | This paper studies the evolution of tax morale in Spain in the post-Franco era. In contrast to the previous tax compliance literature, the current paper investigates tax morale as the dependent variable and attempts to answer what actually shapes tax morale. The analysis uses survey data from two sources: the World Values Survey and the European Values Survey, allowing us to observe tax morale in Spain for the years 1981, 1990, 1995, and 1999/2000. The study of the evolution of tax morale in Spain over nearly a 20-year span is particularly interesting because the political and fiscal system evolved very rapidly during that period. |
| Keywords: | Spain, Tax morale, Tax compliance, Constitutional and political changes, fiscal system, endogenous preferences. |
| JEL: | H26 H73 K42 O17 Z13 |
| Date: | 2007–08–14 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qut:dpaper:224&r=law |
| By: | Gómez-sorzano, Gustavo |
| Abstract: | I apply the Beveridge-Nelson business cycle decomposition method to the time series of per capita murder in the State of California. (1933-2005). Separating out “permanent” from “cyclical” murder, I hypothesize that the cyclical part coincides with documented waves of organized crime, internal tensions, breakdowns in social order as riots, crime legislation, social, and political unrest, and recently with the periodic terrorist attacks to the U.S. The estimated cyclical component of murder warns that terrorist attacks against the U.S. have affected California creating estimated turning point dates marked by the most tragic terrorist attacks to the nation: the shut down in power in NYC in 1965, the World Trade Center Bombing in 1993, and 9/11 2001. This paper belongs to the series of papers helping the U.S identify the closeness of terrorist attacks, and constructs the attacks index for California. Other indexes constructed include the Index for the U.S. http://mpra.ub.uni-uenchen.de/1145/01/MPRA_paper_1145.pdf, New York State http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/3776/01/MPRA_paper_3776.pdf, New York City http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/4200/01/MPRA_paper_4200.pdf Arizona State http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/4360/01/MPRA_paper_4360.pdf Massachusetts State http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/4342/01/MPRA_paper_4342.pdf. These indexes must be used as dependent variables in structural models for terrorist attacks and in models assessing the effects of terrorism over the U.S. economy. |
| Keywords: | A model of cyclical terrorist murder in Colombia; 1950-2004. Forecasts 2005-2019; the econometrics of violence; terrorism; and scenarios for peace in Colombia from 1950 to 2019; scenarios for sustainable peace in Colombia by year 2019; decomposing violence: terrorist murder in the twentieth in the United States; using the Beveridge and Nelson decomposition of economic time series for pointing out the occurrence of terrorist attacks; decomposing violence: terrorist murder and attacks in New York State from 1933 to 2005; terrorist murder; cycles of violence; and terrorist attacks in New York City during the last two centuries. |
| JEL: | O51 H56 C22 K14 K42 D74 N42 |
| Date: | 2007–01–23 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:4450&r=law |
| By: | Justus Haucap; Uwe Pauly; Christian Wey |
| Abstract: | This paper offers a cartel explanation for the stability of German collective bargaining institutions.We show that a dense net of legal safeguards has been yarned around the wage setting cartel. These measures make deviation by cartel insiders less attractive and simultaneously erect entry barriers for alternative unions. As we argue many recent labor policy measures, which make wages more flexible, serve to further stabilize the labor cartel, while truly pro-competitive proposals have not been implemented exactly because of their destabilizing effects.We propose policy measures that remove entry barriers and facilitate outside competition by alternative collective bargaining organizations. |
| Keywords: | Labor market cartel, labor market institutions, collective bargaining |
| JEL: | J52 K31 L12 |
| Date: | 2007–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0009&r=law |
| By: | Hannes Spengler; Sandra Schaffner |
| Abstract: | This paper presents a new approach to obtain unbiased estimates of the value of a statistical life (VSL) with labor market data. Investigating job changes,we combine the advantages of recent panel studies, which allow to control for unobserved heterogeneity of workers, and conventional cross-sectional estimations, which primarily exploit the variation of wage and risk between different jobs.We find a VSL of 6.1 million euros from pooled cross-sectional estimation, 1.9 million euros from the static first-differences panel model and 3.5 million euros from the job-changer specification.Thus, ignoring individual heterogeneity causes overestimates of the VSL, whereas identifying the wage-risk tradeoff not only by means of between job variation (job-changer model) but also on the basis of noisy variation on the job (panel models) may lead to underestimates of the VSL. Our results can be used to perform cost-benefit analyses of public projects aimed at reducing fatality risks, e.g., in the domains of health, environmental or traffic policy. |
| Keywords: | Value of a statistical life (VSL), compensating wage differentials, work accidents, job changes |
| JEL: | I10 J17 J28 K00 |
| Date: | 2007–06 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:rwi:repape:0014&r=law |