Johannes Kepler University of Linz

About: Johannes Kepler University of Linz is a education organization based out in Linz, Oberösterreich, Austria. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Thin film & Quantum dot. The organization has 6605 authors who have published 19243 publications receiving 385667 citations.

The Devil is in the Shadow: Do Institutions Affect Income and Productivity or Only Official Income and Official Productivity?

Abstract: This paper assesses the relationship between institutions, output, and productivity, when official output is corrected for the size of the shadow economy Our results confirm the usual positive impact of institutional quality on official output and total factor productivity, and its negative impact on the size of the underground economy However, once output is corrected for the shadow economy, the relationship between institutions and output becomes weaker The impact of institutions on total ("corrected") factor productivity even becomes insignificant Differences in corrected output must then be attributed to differences in factor endowments These results survive several tests for robustness

Local autonomy, tax morale, and the shadow economy

Abstract: Policymakers often propose strict enforcement strategies to fight the shadow economy and to increase tax morale. However, there is an alternative bottom-up approach that decentralises political power to those who are close to the problems. This paper analyses the relationship with local autonomy. We use data on tax morale at the individual level and macro data on the size of the shadow economy to analyse the relevance of local autonomy and compliance in Switzerland. The findings suggest that there is a positive (negative) relationship between local autonomy and tax morale (size of the shadow economy).

Risk approaches for delivering disaster relief supplies

Abstract: We consider the problem of designing the logistic system to assure adequate distribution of relief aid in a post-natural-disaster situation, when damages to infrastructure may disrupt the delivery of relief aid. The problem is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem, encompassing three objective functions of central interest in such problems. The first objective function is a measure of risk (various forms of such risk are analyzed). The second objective function measures the coverage provided by the logistic system in the distribution of relief aid to disaster victims. The third objective function represents total travel time. We focus on the risk of delivery tours for relief supplies, where risk here captures the threat that potential tours become impassable after the natural hazard event. In order to cope with a range of different natural disasters and policy objectives, we develop five approaches emphasizing different measures of tour-dependent risk. To cover both earthquake and flood risks, we consider correlated as well as uncorrelated risk measures. We develop a two-phase solution approach to reflect the dictates of real-world disaster relief motivating this analysis. The first phase generates potentially Pareto-optimal solutions to the overall multi-objective logistic design problem with respect to three objectives. For any given risk measure, the first-phase design problem is formulated as a multi-objective integer program and a memetic algorithm is proposed as the solution approach. The second phase is an enrichment procedure to generate a broader range of potentially Pareto-optimal alternatives. The suggested approach is tested on real-world data from the province of Manabi in Ecuador and the results associated with the different risk measures are analyzed to illustrate the value of the proposed approach for the design of disaster relief networks.