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DIW Discussion Papers 555 / 2006
Estimates of labour supply effects of recent UK reforms in the area of direct taxes and benefits show that policy can have significant influence on the level of employment. We confirm this in a simulation of in-work support system introduced into the German tax and benefit system. Our simulation results suggest that introducing in-work Tax Credits in Germany would increase employment of single individuals ...
2006| Peter Haan, Michal Myck
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DIW Discussion Papers 554 / 2006
The appropriately selected leading indicators can substantially improve the forecasting of the peaks and troughs of the business cycle. Using the novel methodology of the dynamic bi-factor model with Markov switching and the data for the three largest European economies (France, Germany, and UK) we construct a composite leading indicator (CLI) and a composite coincident indicator (CCI) as well as corresponding ...
2006| Konstantin A. Kholodilin
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DIW Discussion Papers 553 / 2006
This paper provides a cross-country efficiency analysis of electricity distribution companies in East European transition countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary). We compare the relative technical efficiency of East European regional distribution companies (RDCs) among themselves, as well as with German RDCs. We use the nonparametric DEA, and also apply bootstrapping techniques and ...
2006| Astrid Cullmann, Jürgen Apfelbeck, Christian von Hirschhausen
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DIW Discussion Papers 552 / 2006
In this paper, we analyze structural changes in long-term contracts in the international trade of natural gas. Using a unique data set of 262 long-term contracts between natural gas producers and importers, we estimate the impact of different institutional, structural and technical variables on the duration of contracts. We find that contract duration decreases as the market structure of the industry ...
2006| Anne Neumann, Christian von Hirschhausen
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DIW Discussion Papers 551 / 2006
Structural changes in the European natural gas market such as liberalization, increasing demand, and growing import dependency have triggered new attempts to model this market accurately. This paper presents a model of the European natural gas supply, GASMOD, which is structured as a two-stagegame of successive natural gas exports to Europe (upstream market) and wholesale trade within Europe (downstream ...
2006| Franziska Holz, Christian von Hirschhausen, Claudia Kemfert
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DIW Discussion Papers 550 / 2006
We provide new evidence about the degree of social segregation in England's secondary schools, employing a cross-national perspective. Analysis is based on data for 27 rich industrialised countries from the 2000 and 2003 rounds of the Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA), using a number of different measures of social background and of segregation, and allowing for sampling variation ...
2006| Stephen P. Jenkins, John Micklewright, Sylke V. Schnepf
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DIW Discussion Papers 549 / 2006
Informed capital is a crucial ingredient to a well-functioning market for start-up finance, especially in times of difficult market conditions. For bank-based systems, the question regarding which investors actually supply informed capital has not yet been answered. To fill this gap, we conduct a survey among German suppliers of start-up finance. We find significant differences between the investors ...
2006| Dorothea Schäfer, Dirk Schilder
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DIW Discussion Papers 548 / 2006
According to the economic theory of crime, a rise in expected punishment (the product of probability and severity of punishment) results in a reduction of crime due to deterrence. What appears to be a simple and straightforward hypotheses turns out to be a demanding task for empirical examination because "crime" is composed of many different offence categories and expected punishment is influenced ...
2006| Hannes Spengler
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DIW Discussion Papers 547 / 2006
There are concerns about the attachment of immigrants to the labor force, and the potential policy responses. This paper uses a bi-national survey on immigrant performance to investigate the sorting of individuals into full-time paid-employment and entrepreneurship and their economic success. Particular attention is paid to the role of legal status at entry in the host country (worker, refugee, and ...
2006| Amelie Constant, Klaus F. Zimmermann
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DIW Discussion Papers 546 / 2006
Drawing on data from two multitrait multimethod experiments carried out in the context of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), this paper identifies questionnaire designs that minimize measurement error in reports of subjective well-being. Among the survey instruments most often used to measure well-being, the analysis focuses on three response formats (11-point, 7-point and magnitude satisfaction ...
2006| Martin Kroh
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DIW Discussion Papers 545 / 2006
The aggregate average wage is often used as an indicator of economic performance and welfare, and as such often serves as a benchmark for changes in the generosity of public transfers and for wage negotiations. Yet if economies experience a high degree of (nonrandom) fluctuation in employment the composition of the employed population will have a considerable effect on the computed average. In this ...
2006| Michal Myck, Leszek Morawski, Jerzy Mycielski
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DIW Discussion Papers 544 / 2005
A comparison of women's and men's economic relations in the former East and West Germany (in this paper henceforth referred to as East and West Germany) in the years following reunification in 1990 is used to exemplify the differential impact of varying opportunity structures on the extent of and change in women's relative contribution to family income. East Germany represents a special case among ...
2005| Heike Trappe, Annemette Sørensen
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DIW Discussion Papers 543 / 2005
Der Ausbau von Ganztagsschulen genießt derzeit - u.a. auf Grund des schlechten Abschneidens deutscher Schüler bei der PISA-Studie - hohe Priorität in der politischen Agenda. In diesem Beitrag soll untersucht werden, wie sich der Ausbau von Ganztagsschulen auf die Erwerbsbeteiligung von Müttern mit Kindern im Grundschulalter auswirken wird. Hierfür schätzen wir ein strukturelles Arbeitsangebotsmodell, ...
2005| Miriam Beblo, Charlotte Lauer, Katharina Wrohlich
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DIW Discussion Papers 542 / 2005
In this paper, we address the question whether family support via the income tax system is more generous in France than in Germany, as it is often claimed in the public debate. We use two micro-data sets and a micro-simulation model to compare effective average tax rates for different household types in France and Germany. Our analysis shows that the popular belief that French high income families ...
2005| Alexandre Baclet, Fabien Dell, Katharina Wrohlich
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DIW Discussion Papers 541 / 2005
Due to the complexity of employment protection legislation (EPL) in Germany, there is notable uncertainty about the outcomes of dismissal conflicts. In this study we focus on severance pay and inquire whether its incidence and level varies in a systematic manner with the legal rules as defined by labour as well as tax law. We start with a theoretical model that generates the main observable outcomes ...
2005| Laszlo Goerke, Markus Pannenberg
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DIW Discussion Papers 540 / 2005
This paper delivers new insights into the development of income inequality and regional stratification in Germany after unification using a new method for detecting social stratification by a decomposition of the GINI index which yields the obligatory between- and withingroup components as well as an "overlapping" index for the different sup-populations. We apply this method together with a jackknife ...
2005| Joachim R. Frick, Jan Goebel
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DIW Discussion Papers 539 / 2005
Die Arbeit untersucht mittels IAB-Beschäftigtenstichprobe, Sozioökonomischem Panel und Informationen über tödliche Arbeitsunfälle die Existenz kompensatorischer Lohndifferentiale zur Bestimmung desWertes eines statistischen Lebens (WSL) in Deutschland. Querschnittsregressionen auf Basis aller Erwerbstätigen ergeben mit 7,4 (IABS) bzw.3,5 (SOEP) Mio. € WSL-Schätzungen in der Größenordnung von querschnittsbasierten ...
2005| Sandra Schaffner, Hannes Spengler
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DIW Discussion Papers 538 / 2005
In this paper I develop an intertemporal discrete choice model of labor supply. The framework incorporates the nonlinearities in the household budget set and accounts for state dependence in labor supply. Based on panel data for Germany (SOEP), I estimate this model using a dynamic conditional logit panel data model with random effects. The estimation results show that state dependence is significantly ...
2005| Peter Haan
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DIW Discussion Papers 537 / 2005
In 14 member states of the European Union, women's relative to men's levels of job satisfaction are compared by using data of the European Household Community Panel. The countries under consideration can be assigned to three different groups. Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands do not show significant gender-job satisfaction differences. In contrast, in Portugal men are more satisfied with their jobs ...
2005| Lutz C. Kaiser
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DIW Discussion Papers 536 / 2005
To tackle mass unemployment and increase participation rates, the German government over recent years has mainly focused on supply side strategies, including 'making work pay' policies. The 2003 Mini-Job reform introduced an extended subsidy of social security contributions for low wage workers. In this paper, we evaluate the employment effects of this reform using a behavioural tax-benefit microsimulation ...
2005| Olivier Bargain, Marco Caliendo, Peter Haan, Kristian Orsini