Suchergebnisse

AbstractWe consider a government that purchases a public good or a private good for public consumption from a heterogenous group of professionals (such as scientists, doctors, or lawyers) in an environment characterized by an extremely high level of information asymmetry. Specifically, we assume that the government needs information from a self‐regulatory organization (SRO) of agents (such as a research council, a medical board, or a bar association) to draft the contract. We show that the government information disadvantage is minimized when the SRO is dictatorial, that is, when it follows the preferences of the efficient agents.

Abstract
Professions such as doctors and lawyers often enjoy some degree of self-regulation, i.e. they can set the codes of conduct in the market and even determine the rules for joining the profession. We address the problem of the optimal scope of self-regulation. Specifically, we model a profession that can decide about the quality of the service, and we examine if the profession should also be allowed to determine the number of suppliers. We assume that a larger number of professionals reduce the fixed cost of providing quality, and hence the motive to restrict entry is mitigated. Nonetheless, we find that for well-behaved fixed costs functions, the size of the profession preferred by the professionals is smaller than the socially optimal one. Still, if the only alternative to self-regulation is free entry to the profession, then self-regulation is the preferable regime. These findings are relevant for the services that are difficult to substitute by the services produced outside the profession.

Concubinage, as a form of a permanent, extramarital union between a man and a woman, was known and practiced in ancient Rome. We can distinguish three basic phases in the Christian emperors' legislative activities concerning concubinage: the first one - started by Constantine, the second one - being the work of emperor Justinian, and the third, final one - including the decisions of Leo VI the Philosopher. It is of course not possible to meet the period between the reign of Constantine and Justinian with silence as laws on concubinage were issued at that time, too. But they did not have such a principal character as those issued in the above mentioned phases. The Christian emperor's legislation regarding cuncubinage was mainly a reflection of opinions and ideas propagated by the Church. Some emperors directed their main attention at activities aimed at limiting a concubine's and her offspring's position, while others created conditions for the transformation of this extramarital relation into iustum matrimonium. ; k.szczygielski@uwb.edu.pl ; University of Bialystok and Lazarski School of Commerce and Law in Warsaw ; 431 ; 439

We study the assimilation behavior of a group of migrants who live in a city populated by native inhabitants. We conceptualize the group as a community, and the city as a social space. Assimilation increases the productivity of migrants and, consequently, their earnings. However, assimilation also brings the migrants closer in social space to the richer native inhabitants. This proximity subjects the migrants to relative deprivation. We consider a community of migrants whose members are at an equilibrium level of assimilation that was chosen as a result of the maximization of a utility function that has as its arguments income, the cost of assimilation effort, and a measure of relative deprivation. We ask how vulnerable this assimilation equilibrium is to the appearance of a "mutant" - a member of the community who is exogenously endowed with a superior capacity to assimilate. If the mutant were to act on his enhanced ability, his earnings would be higher than those of his fellow migrants, which will expose them to greater relative deprivation. We find that the stability of the pre-mutation assimilation equilibrium depends on the cohesion of the migrants' community, expressed as an ability to effectively sanction and discourage the mutant from deviating. The equilibrium level of assimilation of a tightly knit community is stable in the sense of not being vulnerable to the appearance of a member becoming better able to assimilate. However, if the community is loose-knit, the appearance of a mutant will destabilize the pre-mutation assimilation equilibrium, and will result in a higher equilibrium level of assimilation.

The aim of the project is to analyze government support for innovation in a comparative perspective by first examining the main existing instruments of financial support for innovation in Turkey and Poland, and secondly to assess their effectiveness by applying recent econometric techniques to firm-level data for both countries obtained from the Community Innovation Survey (CIS). Comparing Turkey to Poland is both meaningful and promising from a policy-analysis point of view. Both countries are comparable in terms of levels of economic development and technological capabilities, i.e. the ability of their economies to create knowledge and exploit it commercially. Both have undergone deep market-oriented reforms in the last decades - Turkey since 1980, Poland since 1989 - resulting in a significant catching-up of their economies. However, as the possibilities for further growth based on structural change and eliminating obstacles to business are shrinking, the problem of building a knowledge-based economy comes to the fore.