Volkswirtschaftliche Fakultät - Digitale Hochschulschriften der LMU

Eine eingehende Kritik der paretianischen Wohlfahrtstheorie zeigt, daß normative Urteile in der Ökonomie einer breiteren ethisch-normativen Grundlage bedürfen. Neuere metaethische Ansätze begründen die prinzipielle Möglichkeit der dazu erforderlichen kognitiven ethischen Urteile. Als konkreter inhaltlicher Vorschlag für eine solche Grundlage wird die Rawlssche Theorie der Gerechtigkeit kurz vorgestellt und in ihrem Kern, der eine Kritik des Utilitarismus einschließt, auch formal rekonstruiert. Die Tragfähigkeit und die Konsequenzen der verschiedenen diskutierten Ansätze werden dann abschließend anhand der konkreten und aktuellen Problematik des Klimawandels und möglicher Strategien seiner Vermeidung überprüft.

In this study we analyze how markets work in the Information Society. In particular we concentrate on three important markets: the software market, the broadcasting market and "technology markets" where intellectual property rights can be traded. All these markets are characterized by modes of competition that are rather unorthodox

and beyond simple Cournot or Bertrand models.

Therefore, extended models are needed to gain insights about competition in the Information Society.

The ability to solve problems of collective action is crucial for economic performance. Growth-fostering behavioral propensities such as respecting property, honoring contracts, or helping others are collectively beneficial but individually costly. The paradigmatic formalization of this rationality gap is provided by the non-iterated Prisoners’ Dilemma, where rational players are locked in at a state of mutual defection while mutual cooperation would be better for everyone. In sporadic, ex-ante anonymous interactions (like in modern large-scale societies), the ‘shadow of the future’ cannot sustain cooperation. Cooperation must be altruistic, in the sense that a cooperator enhances her opponent’s payoff at her own expense. In this piece of work another group selection mechanism is presented that generates and sustains altruism in ex-ante anonymous settings. Assuming that cooperative attitudes are coupled with a preference for participating in costly rituals (religious involvement is taken as an example), interactions take place within two endogenously separated groups. The signaling value of religion in the model derives not from differential costliness but from cooperators’ intrinsic nature of motivation. Noncooperative types have to learn about the matching gains from religious involvement while cooperative types need not. This induces an initial advantage to cooperative/religious types at the beginning of each generation, thereby sustaining altruism in the long run via religious participation.

The German apprenticeship system has often been considered a role model for vocational education. But recent shortages in apprenticeship positions have led to a renewed debate about appropriate training policy. At present, there are renewed calls to introduce a training levy scheme, which would impose training levies on non-training firms and give additional support to training firms. Some economists favor this policy in order to counteract poaching of trained apprentices. Other economists oppose it strongly on the basis that positive spillovers do not occur. Still others suggest to loosen training regulations and allow for reimbursement clauses in training contracts. Surprisingly, a general economic analysis and comparison of these alternative instruments is still lacking. This work attempts to close this gap. It investigates whether poaching enables to derive positive spillovers from apprenticeship training, and if so, whether training policy could play a mitigating role.

Following the recent training literature, we use a simple oligopsonistic labor market model with endogenous turnover. Such a setting allows us to explain why firms provide and (at least partially) finance general vocational training. Moreover, it demonstrates that a positive externality arises as competing firms benefit from vocational training through poaching. We then introduce alternative policy instruments into the model. In principle, the Pigouvian prescription of a perfect subsidy scheme financed by a non-distortionary tax could restore the social optimum. The proposed training levy scheme, however, is a particular scheme that links subsidies and levies. This paper demonstrates that it basically corresponds to a uniform subsidy on apprenticeship training that is financed by a distortionary tax on labor. We show that introducing this training levy scheme can entail ambiguous repercussions on general welfare even when transaction costs are excluded.

Reimbursement clauses, in contrast, oblige the trainee to compensate for training when quitting the firm. They alter workers' outside options and thereby increase firms' wage-setting power. In this model, in opposition to earlier studies, we show that they do not affect training spillovers. Instead, they are identified as an implicit training loan.