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DIW Discussion Papers 1017 / 2010
This paper examines the long-run relationship between energy consumption and real GDP, including energy prices, for 25 OECD countries from 1981 to 2007. The distinction between common factors and idiosyncratic components using principal component analysis allows to distinguish between developments on an international and a national level as drivers of the long-run relationship. Indeed, cointegration ...
2010| Ansgar Belke, Christian Dreger, Frauke de Haan
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DIW Discussion Papers 1016 / 2010
This paper analyses the long-memory properties of high frequency financial time series. It focuses on temporal aggregation and the influence that this might have on the degree of dependence of the series. Fractional integration or I(d) models are estimated with a variety of specifications for the error term. In brief, we find evidence that a lower degree of integration is associated with lower data ...
2010| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana
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DIW Discussion Papers 1015 / 2010
Models in which employers learn about the productivity of young workers, such as Altonji and Pierret (2001), have two principal implications: First, the distribution of wages becomes more dispersed as a cohort of workers gains experience; second, the coefficient on a variable that employers initially do not observe, such as the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT) score, grows with experience. If ...
2010| Hani Mansour
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DIW Discussion Papers 1014 / 2010
Since September 2000, as a result of mobility restrictions, the supply of Palestinian workers competing for local jobs in the West Bank has increased by about fifty percent. This paper takes advantage of this unique natural experiment to study the effects of labor supply shocks on labor market outcomes. Using quarterly information on wages and employment in each city in the West Bank, the paper analyzes ...
2010| Hani Mansour
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DIW Discussion Papers 1013 / 2010
This paper analyzes the distributive impacts of violent conflicts, which is in contrast to previous literature that has focused on the other direction. We use cross-country panel data for the time period 1960-2005 to estimate war-related changes in income inequality. Our results indicate rising levels of inequality during war and especially in the early period of post-war reconstruction. However, we ...
2010| Cagatay Bircan, Tilman Brück, Marc Vothknecht
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DIW Discussion Papers 1012 / 2010
Analyzing a sequential bargaining framework with one retailer and two suppliers of substitutable goods, we show that slotting fees may emerge as a result of a rent-shifting mechanism when consumer shopping costs are taken into account. If consumers economize on their shopping costs by bundling their purchases, their buying decision depends rather on the price for the whole shopping basket than on individual ...
2010| Stéphane Caprice, Vanessa von Schlippenbach
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DIW Discussion Papers 1011 / 2010
This paper investigates the impact of the exchange rate regime on the current account adjustment process. In a first step, the present analysis assesses previous empirical work supporting the predominant view that more flexible exchange rate regimes facilitate current account adjustments. Using a FGLS estimator with fixed effects and panel corrected standard errors, the author draws upon the methodological ...
2010| Marius Tippkötter
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DIW Discussion Papers 1010 / 2010
Using data from the long-running German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) 1984-2008, this paper analyses the effects of individual preferences and choices on subjective well-being (SWB). It is shown that preferences and choices relating to life goals/values, partner's personality, hours of work, social participation and healthy lifestyle all have substantial effects on life satisfaction. The results have ...
2010| Bruce Headey, Ruud Muffels, Gert G. Wagner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1009 / 2010
We model EU countries' bank ratings using financial variables and allowing for intercept and slope heterogeneity. Our aim is to assess whether "old" and "new" EU countries are rated differently and to determine whether "new" ones are assigned lower ratings, ceteris paribus, than "old" ones. We find that country-specific factors (in the form of heterogeneous intercepts) are a crucial determinant of ...
2010| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Roman Matousek, Chris Stewart
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DIW Discussion Papers 1008 / 2010
We analyze the bargaining problem of an incumbent firm and a union when the wage contract becomes generally binding. Our main application relates to competition among operators of mail delivery networks. We describe the Deutsche Post case which highlights the raising rivals' costs incentive and its consequences resulting from labor laws that make collective agreements generally binding. We show that ...
2010| Sven Heitzler, Christian Wey
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DIW Discussion Papers 1007 / 2010
While social relationships play an important role for individuals to cope with missing market institutions, they also limit individuals' range of trading partners. This paper aims at understanding the determinants of trust at various social distances when information asymmetries are present. Among participants from an informal housing area in Cairo we find that the increase in trust following a reduction ...
2010| Christine Binzel, Dietmar Fehr
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DIW Discussion Papers 1006 / 2010
This paper examines the degree of persistence in the volatility of financial time series using a Long Memory Stochastic Volatility (LMSV) model. Specifically, it employs a Gaussian semiparametric (or local Whittle) estimator of the memory parameter, based on the frequency domain, proposed by Robinson (1995a), and shown by Arteche (2004) to be consistent and asymptotically normal in the context of signal ...
2010| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana
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DIW Discussion Papers 1005 / 2010
Remittances from Germany are substantial. Cross-border transfers to family and friendship networks outside Germany are not only made by foreigners. Many naturalized migrants send money home as well. Here, we focus on international networks and gender-specific determinants of remittances from the senders' perspective, based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the years 2001-2006. ...
2010| Elke Holst, Andrea Schäfer, Mechthild Schrooten
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DIW Discussion Papers 1004 / 2010
In this paper, we compare the distribution of price changes between collusive and noncollusive periods for ten major cartels. The first moments focus on previous research. We extend the discussion to the third (skewness) and fourth (kurtosis) moments. However, none of the above descriptive statistics can be considered as a robust test allowing a differentiation between competition and cartel. Therefore, ...
2010| Korbinian von Blanckenburg, Alexander Geist, Konstantin A. Kholodilin
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DIW Discussion Papers 1003 / 2010
Die Konsolidierung der Staatsfinanzen nach der gegenwärtigen Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise wird eines der zentralen wirtschaftspolitischen Themen der nächsten Jahre sein: Die Regelungen zur "Schuldenbremse" sehen für den Bundeshaushalt bis 2016 einen annähernd ausgeglichenen Haushalt vor, und auch die Länderhaushalte sollen bis 2020 weitgehend konsolidiert werden. Dadurch ergibt sich ein erheblicher ...
2010| Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 1002 / 2010
A strong private equity market is a cornerstone for commercialization and innovation in modern economies. However, substantial differences exist in the relative amounts raised and invested in private equity across European countries. We investigate the macro-determinants of private equity investment in Europe, focusing on the comparison between CEE and Western European countries. Our estimations are ...
2010| Kerstin Bernoth, Roberta Colavecchio, Magdolna Sass
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DIW Discussion Papers 1001 / 2010
Der Beitrag geht davon aus, dass sich in den Spitzengremien der großen Unternehmen bestehende Chancenungleichheiten zwischen den Geschlechtern auf dem Arbeitsmarkt und in der Gesellschaft kristallisieren. In den Vorständen der größten privaten Unternehmen in Deutschland besteht eine männliche Monokultur. In den Aufsichtsräten wird sie nur deshalb etwas gemildert, weil die Arbeitnehmervertretungen rund ...
2010| Elke Holst, Anita Wiemer
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DIW Discussion Papers 1000 / 2010
In view of rising wage and income inequality, the introduction of a legal minimum wage has recently become an important policy issue in Germany. We analyze the distributional effects of a nationwide legal minimum wage of 7.50 € per hour on the basis of a microsimulation model which accounts for the complex interactions between individual wages, the tax-benefit system and net household incomes, also ...
2010| Kai-Uwe Müller, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 999 / 2010
This paper investigates the effect of ethnicity on time spent on overlapped household production, work and leisure activities employing the 2000-2001 UK Time Use Survey. We find that, unconditionally, white females manage to "stretch" their time the most by an additional 233 minutes per day and non-white men "stretch" their time the least. The three secondary activities that are most often combined ...
2010| Anzelika Zaiceva, Klaus F. Zimmermann
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DIW Discussion Papers 998 / 2010
This study used data from the German Socio-economic Panel to examine gender differences in the extent to which self-reported subjective well-being was associated with occupying a high-level managerial position in the labour market, compared with employment in nonleadership, non-high-level managerial positions, unemployment, and non-labour market participation. Our results indicated that a clear hierarchy ...
2010| Eileen Trzcinski, Elke Holst