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DIW Discussion Papers 616 / 2006
The paper investigates the role of human capital for migrants' ethnic ties towards their home and host countries. Pre-migration characteristics dominate ethnic self-identification. Human capital acquired in the host country does not affect the attachment to the receiving country.
2006| Laura Zimmermann, Liliya Gataullina, Amelie Constant, Klaus F. Zimmermann
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DIW Discussion Papers 615 / 2006
We estimate the sticky information Phillips curve model of Mankiw and Reis (2002) using survey expectations of professional forecasters from four major European economies. Our estimates imply that inflation expectations in France, Germany and the United Kingdom are updated about once a year, in Italy about once each six months.
2006| Jörg Döpke, Jonas Dovern, Ulrich Fritsche, Jiri Slacalek
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DIW Discussion Papers 614 / 2006
We examine equilibria in competitive insurance markets when individuals take unobservable labor supply decisions. Precautionary labor motives intro-duce countervailing incentives in the insurance market, and equilibria with positive profits can occur even in the standard case in which individuals exogenously differ in risk only. We then extend the model to allow for both privately known risks and labor ...
2006| Nick Netzer, Florian Scheuer
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DIW Discussion Papers 613 / 2006
In the development literature, there exists no systematic study of external borrowing in post-conflict countries. We address this gap by analyzing statistical and case study evidence from three African countries. We find that many war-affected countries face rising debt arrears and deteriorating relations with creditors. Rebuilding trust between lenders and borrowers is hence a crucial but often slow ...
2006| Patricia Alvarez-Plata, Tilman Brück
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DIW Discussion Papers 612 / 2006
We analyze the effects of three alternative proposals to reform the taxation of families relative to the current German system of joint taxation of couples and child allowances: a French-type family splitting and two full family splitting proposals. The empirical analysis of the effects of these proposals on the income distribution and on work incentives is based on a behavioral micro-simulation model ...
2006| Viktor Steiner, Katharina Wrohlich
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DIW Discussion Papers 611 / 2006
In developing countries illness shocks can have a severe impact on household income. Few studies have so fare examined the effects of mortality. The major difference between illness and mortality shocks is that a death of a household member does not only induce direct costs such as medical and funeral costs and possibly a loss in income, but that also the number of consumption units in the household ...
2006| Michael Grimm
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DIW Discussion Papers 610 / 2006
We analyse the impact on schooling outcomes of growing up in a family headed by a single mother. Growing up in a non-intact family in Germany is associated with worse outcomes in models that do not control for possible correlations between common unobserved determinants of family structure and educational performance. But once endogeneity is accounted for, whether by using sibling-difference estimators ...
2006| Marco Francesconi, Stephen P. Jenkins, Thomas Siedler
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DIW Discussion Papers 609 / 2006
The level of trust inherent in a society is important for a wide range of microeconomic and macroeconomic outcomes. This paper investigates how individuals' attitudes toward social and institutional trust are shaped by the political regime in which they live. The German reunification is a unique natural experiment that allows us to conduct such a study. Using data from the German General Social Survey ...
2006| Helmut Rainer, Thomas Siedler
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DIW Discussion Papers 608 / 2006
In most industrialized countries, more people than ever are having to cope with the burden of caring for elderly parents. This paper formulates a model to explain how parental care responsibilities and family structure interact in affecting children's mobility characteristics. A key insight we obtain is that the mobility of young adults crucially depends on the presence of a sibling. Our explanation ...
2006| Helmut Rainer, Thomas Siedler
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DIW Discussion Papers 607 / 2006
An adequate theory of happiness or subjective well-being (SWB) needs to link at least three sets of variables: stable person characteristics (including personality traits), life events and measures of well-being (life satisfaction, positive affects) and ill-being (anxiety, depression, negative affects). It also needs to be based on long term data in order to account for long term change in SWB. By ...
2006| Bruce Headey
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DIW Discussion Papers 606 / 2006
Using micro panel data, labor market transitions are analyzed for the EU-member states by cumulative year-by-year transition probabilities. As female (non-)employment patterns changed more dramatically than male employment in past decades, the analyses mainly refer to female labor supply. In search for important determinants of these transitions, six EU-countries with different labor market-regimes ...
2006| Lutz C. Kaiser
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DIW Discussion Papers 605 / 2006
Top-down computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are used extensively for analysis of energy and climate policies. Energy-intensive industries are usually represented in top-down economic models as abstract economic production functions, of the constantelasticity-of-substitution (CES) functional form. This study explores methods for improving the realism of energy-intensive industries in top-down ...
2006| Katja Schumacher, Ronald D. Sands
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DIW Discussion Papers 604 / 2006
We investigate in a horizontal product differentiation model with North-South trade the implications of a home bias in consumers' demand for labelled goods. We compare mutual recognition and international harmonisation of ecological labels with respect to firms' profits and welfare. Northern consumers perceive a warm glow from buying green, but have information problems with imported labelled products. ...
2006| Wilhelm Althammer, Susanne Dröge
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DIW Discussion Papers 603 / 2006
In diesem Beitrag wird auf der Basis von Paneldaten für die westdeutschen Bundesländer untersucht, ob und in welchem Maße der demographische Wandel sowie die unterschiedlichen politischen Parteienkonstellationen die Hochschulausgaben auf Länderebene beeinflussen. Wir finden empirische Evidenz für die Hypothese, dass die Hochschulausgaben negativ von der Bevölkerungsalterung abhängen, allerdings hängt ...
2006| Ulrich Oberndorfer, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 602 / 2006
In contrast to other countries where official odometer readings are collected when cars are being inspected or whenever there is a change in the registration data, no such information is available in Germany. The published annual figures on mileage of German vehicles result from model calculations, based on different data sources. The last two large surveys on car use were carried out in 1993 and 2002. ...
2006| Dominika Kalinowska, Hartmut Kuhfeld
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DIW Discussion Papers 601 / 2006
The enlargement of the European Union in May 2004 by ten new member states bear increasing challenges in creating social cohesion among its citizens and regions. Social cohesion is understood here in a broad sense as a coalescence of European societies in such a way that living conditions and quality of life of its citizens converge. This paper's empirical focus is on the two core life domains that ...
2006| Wolfgang Keck, Peter Krause
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DIW Discussion Papers 600 / 2006
The influence of risk aversion on the decision to become self-employed is a much discussed topic in the entrepreneurial literature. Conventional wisdom asserts that the role model of an entrepreneur requires to make risky decisions in uncertain environments and hence that more risk-averse individuals are less likely to become an entrepreneur. Empirical tests of this assumption are scarce however, mainly ...
2006| Marco Caliendo, Frank M. Fossen, Alexander S. Kritikos
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DIW Discussion Papers 599 / 2006
In this study we have addressed the relationship between the stock market, the measure of real economic activity (represented by the real GDP), the economic sentiment indicator, and real interest rate for the five European countries: Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the UK. We find that even when accounting for expectations, represented by the economic sentiment indicator, the stock market ...
2006| Boriss Siliverstovs, Manh Ha Duong
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DIW Discussion Papers 598 / 2006
This paper suggests a novel approach to pre-selection of the component series of the diffusion index based on their individual forecasting performance. It is shown that this targeted selection allows substantially improving the forecasting ability compared to the diffusion index models that are based on the largest available dataset.
2006| Boriss Siliverstovs, Konstantin A. Kholodilin
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DIW Discussion Papers 597 / 2006
Gazprom, the dominant gas company in Russia, is widely believed to be the key supplier of gas to Europe in the foreseeable future. However, there are numerous uncertainties and challenges within the Russian and European gas industry that may alter the allocation of Gazprom´s gas sales between domestic and export markets. In this paper we use both theoretical and numerical models to study potential ...
2006| Eirik Lund Sagen, Marina Tsygankova