Volkswirtschaftliche Fakultät - Digitale Hochschulschriften der LMU

This dissertation is a collection of three independent research papers and three chapters with surveys introducing into the respective literature. The first paper analyses the effects of introducing Inequity Aversion in a Moral Hazard Problem, the second paper is about optimal delegation in groups involved in contests, and the third paper is about the optimal delegation decision of firms who can hire possibly overconfident managers.

This dissertation is composed of three self-contained essays on strategic interactions under incomplete contracting. Chapter 1 considers the evolution of reciprocal preferences in a setting where individuals live in separate groups. Chapter 2 analyzes the costs and benefits of a separation of powers in an incomplete contracts framework. Chapter 3 finally shows that, even when important parts of a relationship could be arranged perfectly by a complete contract, contractual incompleteness can arise endogenously if the proposal of a complete contract is perceived as a signal of distrust.

Political institutions matter for the incentives of politicians to implement economic reforms. This dissertation presents tools of analysis for understanding how political institutions constrain and shape the incentives of political decision-makers. Thus, it identifies reasons for why current governments might not enact sufficiently large economic reforms, delay necessary reforms, or take the wrong reform steps, as they are commonly perceived to do. In particular, the dissertation analyzes the incentives to privatize state-owned enterprises, to enact reforms in the presence of influential interest gropus, and to implement anti-corruption measures.

Many reasons have been put forward explaining the rate of economic growth in developing countries. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate whether refugees and conflict help to explain Africa and other developing regions’ rate of economic growth.

Economists, especially development economists, have been long engaged with the question of what makes different countries more or less successful economically and what explains their rate of economic growth. Different authors select their own favorite explanatory variables ranging from purely economic, geographic, legal, political, cultural, religious and historical ones. In this work, the flow of refugees and the prevalence conflict in developing countries is introduced as key variables among others as possible factors that could explain the rate of economic growth in Africa and other regions of the developing world.

The poorest countries have provided asylum and shelter for almost three quarter of the world’s refugees over the past decade. However, statistics on refugees in these countries suffer from unavailability, periodical lags and some times contradictions. This study takes the initiative, with these problems in mind, to do a quantitative analysis of the effects of refugees on developing countries. The dataset consists of 72 countries, of which 40 countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, 4 in North Africa and 14 in Asia and South America respectively. The inclusion of countries from other parts of the developing world-Asia and South America- is driven by comparative motives.

Using econometric methods on cross sectional data, the study finds very interesting results on the economic relationship between refugees and refugee-receiving developing countries, refugees and conflict and both variables’ effect on developing countries. In addition, several socio-economic variables-trade, life expectancy, illiteracy rate, gross capital formation and gross foreign direct investment- are significantly affected if a country’s neighbour(s) is/are in conflict and when countries receive large influx of refugees. The study also uses standard methods of panel data estimation (fixed effects and random effects) which makes it possible to control for time-invariant country-specific effects in further establishing short run effects of refugees and conflict in developing countries. Empirical analysis is also carried out, with the use of pooled cross sectional data, on factors affecting the flow of refugees, the effects of refugees on ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ ( rich and poor developing countries are defined by the author in relation to countries in the study) and factors attracting/distracting refugees to /from certain developing countries. The study also looks at the spill over effects of conflicts in neighbouring countries.

This thesis contains four essays on technological and organizational change in health care. Although each chapter can be read independently, there is a central thread resumed in each chapter. The interaction of patient, physician and insurer in the health care market is analysed in different contexts. Chapter 2 studies the physician's decision to adopt new technologies in a situation where patients have control over the amount of health care consumed. This setup of ex-post moral hazard is complemented in chapter 3 by an analysis of supplier-induced demand. Providers' technology choice and adoption of innovations here depend on the profitability of treatment and patients' willingness to consent. A conclusion which may be drawn from these sections is a call for a more integrated provision of health care in the form of managed care. Chapter 4 contains an analysis which explains why physicians, particularly in Germany, are often very much opposed to such new organizational forms of provision of care. In chapter 5, it is shown that patients may not always want to make use of the opportunities offered by technological progress. Information on one's health status which may be acquired, for instance, by genetic tests, may be declined by individuals who fear a breakdown of will. This finding has important implications for the disclosure of information by physicians and for the information acquisition policy of insurers.