Dmitri Blüschke schnellster Ökonom

Das Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre organisierte am 24. November 2022 einen Nachmittag an der Kartbahn im Rosental. Nach zwei heißen Qualifikationsläufen wurde das Finalrennen zwischen den schnellsten acht entschieden, wobei sich Dmitri Blüschke zum Sieger kürte. Martin Wagner als Zweiter und Paul Schweinzer als Dritter ergänzten das Siegerpodest. Wir gratulieren!

6. MQW-Workshop

Am Do. 24. November 2022 findet der 6. Workshop der Abteilung Makroökonomik und Quantitative Wirtschaftsforschung  um 14 Uhr 00 in Raum B02.2.13 statt. Fortsetzung des Vortrags von Christian Zwatz mit dem Titel „Large Sample Robust Inference in the Generalized Linear Regression Model„.

Zuhörer herzlich willkommen!

WiWi-Gastvortrag: Efficiency Effects of Mergers: Harmonising Merged Production

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Mikulas Luptacik (Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien) referiert zum Thema „Efficiency Effects of Mergers: Harmonising Merged Production“ am Sa. 19. November 2022 um 14 Uhr 15 in Raum B02a.2.05 (Lakeside Park). Zuhörer herzlich willkommen!

The model of potential gains from mergers provides a useful decomposition into technical efficiency, returns to scale, and the harmony effect. While technical efficiency and returns to scale have been well elaborated, interpretation of the harmony effect remains open. We provide analytic insight into the aforementioned decomposition. We express the harmony effect as a function of the relative difference between the structures of the firms involved and the relative difference in their sizes. These factors can play an important role and, in some cases, can even outweigh a potentially negative merger outcome due to decreasing returns to scale. Furthermore, we show that the sign of the harmony effect is dependent not on the specific form of the production function but rather on its shape. In the case of a concave production function, the harmony effect contributes in a positive sense to the gains from mergers. Incorporating information on given input prices, the harmony effect is described as the product of technical, price, and allocative efficiency. The potential effects of the technical-physical based harmony effect are illustrated for the Slovak hospital sector. This application provides a detailed look at the reallocation process.

WiWi-Gastvortrag: The Optimal Momentum of Population Growth and Decline

em. o. Univ.-Prof. Dr. Gustav Feichtinger (Technische Universität Wien) referiert zum Thema „The Optimal Momentum of Population Growth and Decline“ am Sa. 19. November 2022 um 13 Uhr in Raum B02a.2.05 (Lakeside Park). Zuhörer herzlich willkommen!

Some fifty years ago, Nathan Keyfitz (1971) asked for the amount a growing human population would further increase if its fertility rate would be reduced immediately to replacement level and remains there forever. The reason for this demographic momentum is an inertia of age structures containing relatively many potential parents due to past high fertility. Nobody expects such a miraculous reduction of reproductive behavior, but a gradual decline of fertility in fast-growing populations seems inevitable. Since any delay in fertility decline to a stationary level leads to an increase of the momentum, we consider an intertemporal trade-off between costly birth control and the demographic momentum at the end of a planning period. Using the McKendrick partial differential equation for the age-structured population dynamics, an appropriate extension of Pontryagin’s maximum principle is applied. The results of such a distributed parameter control framework can also be applied to determine efficient pro-natalistic measures for shrinking populations.