Imposed Benefit Sanctions and the Unemployment-toEmployment Transition: The German Experience We analyze the effect of imposed benefit sanctions on the unemployment-to-employment transition of unemployed people entitled to unemployment compensation on the basis of register data from the German Federal Employment Agency. We combine propensity score matching with a discrete-time hazard rate model...

The Effect of Inspector Group Size and Familiarity on Enforcement and Deterrence The paper provides new insights into the productivity of teams and the relationship between the inspector and the inspected party. Exploiting exogenous variation in the number of inspectors that are sent to offshore oil and gas platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, we find that adding an inspector does not simply result...

JEL Classification: Z13 Social sanction can substitute for the rule of law, particularly in communities where there are repeat interactions and where there is full information about past actions. The expectation of finacial boycotts or social shunning provides an incentive for reducing malfeasance. We construct a rich micro panel data set of U.S. Civil War soldiers from pro-war and anti-war com...

Departing from explanations that involve either altruistic or political motivations of donors, we link a donor’s willingness to give aid to economic incentives and returns. Since targeted aid might increase the returns from trade and FDI linkages for donors, there exists a non-altruistic basis for helping poor countries. We explore this idea by developing a two-country dynamic strategic interac...

This paper indicates that the consequences of regional trade agreements for the world trade system may be deceiving—an arrangement’s apparent virtue may constitute the source of its drawback. In a model where governments have political, as well as economic, motivations, I show that a free trade area induces its members to reduce protection against the non-members, and to do so sufficiently deep...

Temporary Shocks and Offshoring: The Role of External Economies and Firm Heterogeneity We construct a model of offshoring with externalities and firm heterogeneity. Due to the presence of externalities, temporary shocks like the Y2K problem can have permanent effects, i.e., they can permanently raise the extent of offshoring in an industry. Also, the initial advantage of a country as a potentia...

I present a model of offshoring decisions with heterogeneous firms, random adjustment costs, and endogenous markups. The model proposes a tractable probabilistic framework that goes beyond the conventional view of self-selection of more productive firms into offshoring. By characterizing the offshoring decision as a lumpy investment decision subject to heterogeneous adjustment costs, the model ...

In the model where the choice of technology by firms endogenously determines productivity differences, we investigate the link between factor endowment and the productivity both in the firm and industry levels. We find among others that firms in capital-abundant countries tend to adopt new advanced technologies more in their production processes, but opening to international trade will equalize...

This paper analyzes the consequences of parallel trade on health care systems in a two-country model with a vertical distributor relationship. In particular, two cost-sharing systems — coinsurance and indemnity insurance — are compared with respect to changes in copayments and public health expenditure. Under both cost-sharing systems, parallel trade generates a price-decreasing competition eff...

A central result in the theoretical literature on strategic trade is the ‘rent-shifting hypothesis’, the idea that government’s can employ trade policy as a precommitment device to transfer profit from foreign to domestic firms. To our knowledge, however, the rent-shifting hypothesis remains untested empirically. This paper constructs a theory-based empirical test of rent-shifting behavior that...