We assemble two reference point based concepts of utility in our empirical study: the own status quo and social comparisons. We explore the relative relevance of these concepts for total compensation as well as for different parts of the compensation package of managers. Making use of a unique panel data set of managers of the German chemical sector, we find that social comparisons of compensat...

We describe the evolution of productivity growth in a competitive industry with free entry and exit. The exogenous wage rate determines the firms’ engagement in labor productivity enhancing process innovation. There is a unique steady state of the industry dynamics, which is globally asymptotically stable. In the steady state, the number of active firms, their unit labor cost and supply depend ...

This paper examines the effect of information and communication technologies (ICT) on the return paid to two different types of skill: general skills, acquired through schooling and work experience, and job-specific skills, acquired by experience in a particular job. Using the UK Labour Force Survey we estimate skill returns in different industries over the period 1994-2001. We evaluate the mar...

Following recent empirical evidence which indicates the importance of rank for the determination of workers’ wellbeing, this paper introduces status seeking preferences in the form of rank-dependent utility functions into a moral hazard framework with one firm and multiple workers, but no correlation in production. We show that workers’ concern for the rank of their wage in the firm’s wage dist...

This work describes a novel approach towards solving Multimode Resource Constrained Project Scheduling (MRCPS) Problems and an algorithm developed to implement this approach. The algorithm is intended to be used as an alternative to the various genetic algorithms currently being used to solve such problems. Using a deterministic approach that aims to select the optimum modes for execution as ef...

The theoretical framework of urban and regional economics is built on transportation costs for manufactured goods. But over the twentieth century, the costs of moving these goods have declined by over 90% in real terms, and there is little reason to doubt that this decline will continue. Moreover, technological change has eliminated the importance of fixed infrastructure transport (rail and wat...

Using estimates of earnings functions in Ghana, this paper examines patterns of labor market segmentation with regard to formal and informal employment. Persistent earnings differentials are used as indicators of limited mobility across segments of the employed labor force. We find evidence of labor market segmentation between formal and informal employment and between different categories of i...

This note analyses the interaction between nominal wage stickiness and costly employment adjustment in a small closed-economy New Keynesian model with simple rule-based or optimal monetary policy. The results show (1) the costs of nominal and real rigidity to depend on the policy regime, (2) optimal policy to substantially contain the welfare loss, and (3) the absence of quantitatively importan...