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DIW Discussion Papers 535 / 2005
Whereas the number of paid overtime hours declined over the last two decades in Germany, a different trend can be observed for unpaid overtime. We analyze future consequences of unpaid work with respect to a worker's career advancement, such as higher future wages and probabilities of promotion or job retention, which might help to explain why an increasing fraction of employees are working extra hours ...
2005| Silke Anger
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DIW Discussion Papers 534 / 2005
The ad valorem versus unit taxes debate has traditionally emphasized tax yield. For this criterion, ad valorem taxes outperform unit taxes in terms of welfare for a wide range of imperfect competition settings, including Dixit-Stiglitz monopolistic competition. Yet, in a number of policy fields, such as environmental, health or trade economics, policy makers apply taxes to target the production/consumption ...
2005| Susanne Dröge, Philipp J. H. Schröder
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DIW Discussion Papers 533 / 2005
In 2005, the EU introduced an emissions trading system in order to pursue its Kyoto obligations. This instrument gives emitters the flexibility to undertake reduction measures in the most cost-efficient way and mobilizes market forces for the protection of the earth's climate. In this paper, we analyse the effects of emissions trading in Europe, with some special reference to the case of Germany. We ...
2005| Claudia Kemfert, Michael Kohlhaas, Truong P. Truong, Artem Protsenko
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DIW Discussion Papers 532 / 2005
We analyze the distribution and taxation of top incomes in Germany during the 1990s on the basis of individual tax returns data. We derive a measure of economic income from taxable gross income as reported in the tax returns. Thanks to complete sampling, we can deliver a very precise description of very high incomes, in terms of both distribution and composition by source. We also provide a measure ...
2005| Stefan Bach, Giacomo Corneo, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 531 / 2005
This papers studies the effects on service quality and consumer surplus of a minimum price which is fixed by a bureaucratic non-monopolistic professional association. It shows that the price floor set by a Niskanen-type professional assocation will maximize consumer surplus only if consumers demand the highest possible average quality. If consumers demand services of lesser quality, the association's ...
2005| Georg Meran, Reimund Schwarze
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DIW Discussion Papers 530 / 2005
The main aim of this paper is to investigate quantitatively the economic impacts of emissions stabilization scenarios with and without the inclusion of induced technological change (ITC). Improved technological innovations are triggered by increased R&D expenditures that advance energy efficiencies. Model results show that induced technological changes due to increased investment in R&D reduce compliance ...
2005| Claudia Kemfert, Truong P. Truong
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DIW Discussion Papers 529 / 2005
Global Warming Potential (GWP) is an index used to measure the relative accumulated radiative effect of a tonne of greenhouse gas (GHG) compared to that of a 'reference' gas (CO2). Due to the different lifetimes of the GHGs, the GWPs are often measured over a fixed and long period of time (usually 20, 100, or 500 years). The disadvantage of this time-approach is that the index may give a good indication ...
2005| Truong P. Truong, Claudia Kemfert
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DIW Discussion Papers 528 / 2005
In this paper, we consider fiscal competition between jurisdictions. Capital taxes are used to finance a public input and two public goods, one which benefits mobile skilled workers and one which benefits immobile unskilled workers. We derive the jurisdictions' reaction functions for different spending categories. We then estimate these reaction functions using data from German communities. Thereby ...
2005| Rainald Borck, Marco Caliendo, Viktor Steiner
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DIW Discussion Papers 527 / 2005
Income is an important determinant of individual standards of living and participation in social life. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel shows that the level of income also affects a person's health and life expectancy. People's self-assessment of their health and health-related quality of life follow a distribution pattern which can be described as gradient: the lower the income, the more ...
2005| Thomas Lampert, Lars Eric Kroll
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DIW Discussion Papers 526 / 2005
This paper examines how service providers may resolve the trade-off between their personalization efforts and users' individual privacy concerns. Finding that neither an optimized one-size-fits-all strategy, nor a market-driven specialization of providers or choices between different usage scenarios can solve the problem, we analyze how negotiation techniques can lead to efficient contracts and how ...
2005| Sören Preibusch
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DIW Discussion Papers 525 / 2005
Economic disparities between the regions of the European Union are of constant concern both for policy and economic research. In this paper we examine whether there are overlapping trends of regional development in the EU: overall convergence on the one hand and persistent or even increasing spatial concentration (agglomeration) on the other. Kernel density estimation, Markov chain analysis and cross-sectional ...
2005| Kurt Geppert, Michael Happich, Andreas Stephan
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DIW Discussion Papers 524 / 2005
We challenge the view that the presence of powerful buyers stiffles suppliers' incentives to innovate. Following Katz (1987), we model buyer power as buyers' ability to substitute away from a given supplier and isolate several effects that support the opposite view, namely that the presence of powerful buyers induces a supplier to invest more in cost reduction. In contrast to negotiations with smaller ...
2005| Roman Inderst, Christian Wey
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DIW Discussion Papers 523 / 2005
This paper presents a set of panel data to study the diffusion of retail checkout barcode scanning in ten European countries over the period 1981-1996. Estimates from a standard diffusion model suggest that countries differ most in the long-run diffusion level of barcode scanning and less in timing or diffusion speed. We present evidence that the emergence of hypermarkets raises competitive intensity ...
2005| Jonathan Beck, Michal Grajek, Christian Wey
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DIW Discussion Papers 522 / 2005
In this paper we perform a comparative study of the forecasting properties of the alternative leading indicators for Germany using the growth rates of German real GDP. We use the post-unification data which cover years from 1991 through 2004. We detect a structural break in the growth rates that occurs in the first half of 2001. Our results suggest that the forecasting ability of the leading indicators ...
2005| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Boriss Siliverstovs
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DIW Discussion Papers 521 / 2005
New-Keynesian macroeconomic models typically assume that any long-run trade-off between inflation and unemployment is ruled out. While this appears to be a reasonable characterization of the US economy, it is less clear that the natural rate hypothesis necessarily holds in a European country like Germany where hysteretic effects may invalidate it. Inspired by the framework developed by Farmer (2000) ...
2005| Jan Gottschalk, Ulrich Fritsche
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DIW Discussion Papers 520 / 2005
In survival analysis, Cox's name is associated with the partial likelihood technique that allows consistent estimation of proportional hazard scale parameters without specifying a duration dependence baseline. In discrete choice analysis, McFadden's name is associated with the generalized extreme-value (GEV) class of logistic choice models that relax the independence of irrelevant alternatives assumption. ...
2005| Jan Ondrich
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DIW Discussion Papers 519 / 2005
The rapid changes in the transition economies must be evaluated in a comparative context. This paper provides a comprehensive comparative analysis using a large panel data set of market economies as a reference point. We wish to establish the extent and speed with which the structures of the transition economies are converging towards other country groups ranked according to income levels. This exercise ...
2005| Ulrich Thießen, Paul R. Gregory
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DIW Discussion Papers 518 / 2005
Criteria for evaluation of systems of fiscal federalism are derived from the current state of the theory of fiscal federalism. In a second step we provide an overview of developments of fiscal federalism systems in OECD countries highlighting some existing trends. Third, an overview of Russia's regional economic characteristics underlines several reasons that call for a redistribution of income among ...
2005| Ulrich Thießen
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DIW Discussion Papers 517 / 2005
This paper discusses the role of private health insurance (PHI) in developing countries. Three major findings emerge from a comprehensive and systematic review of the performance of PHI in five regions of the developing world. First, PHI involving pre-payment and risk sharing currently only plays a marginal role in the developing world. Second, in many countries the importance of PHI to finance health ...
2005| Denis Drechsler, Johannes Jütting
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DIW Discussion Papers 516 / 2005
We examine optimal taxation and social insurance if insurance markets are imperfect. This requires the development of a theory of labor supply under uncertainty. We show that the case for social insurance is not generally reinforced by adverse selection in insurance markets as social insurance will have welfare-decreasing effects on the labor market. Furthermore, positive and normative implications ...
2005| Nick Netzer, Florian Scheuer