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Rates of Return and Early Retirement Disincentives: Evidence from a German Pension Reform

To counteract the financial pressure emerging in aging societies, statutory pension schemes are undergoing fundamental reforms in many Western countries. Starting with cohort 1937, Germany introduced permanent pension deductions for early retirement. This study examines the profitability of pension contributions against the background of this reform for cohorts 1935–1945. Internal rates of return (IRR) ...

Firms' Evaluation of Location Quality: Evidence from East Germany

Our study provides evidence for firms’ evaluation of location quality. We use a 2004 survey of 6,000 East German firms that contained questions on the importance and assessment of 15 different location factors ranging from closeness to customers and suppliers, transport infrastructure, and proximity to research institutions and universities, as well as questions about the local financial institutions ...

Language Acquisition of Recently Arrived Immigrants in England, Germany, Ireland, and the Netherlands

This study examines processes of language acquisition among new immigrants from Poland and Turkey in different European destinations focusing on the first few months after arrival. Starting from a human capital framework, a variety of pre- and post-migration conditions of language learning are addressed, including economic and non-economic incentives, the amount of exposure to the destination language ...

Terminal Decline in Well-Being: The Role of Social Orientation

Well-being development at the end of life is often characterized by steep deteriorations, but individual differences in these terminal declines are substantial and not yet well understood. This study moved beyond typical consideration of health predictors and explored the role of social orientation and engagement. To do so, we used social variables at the behavioral level (self-ratings of social participation) ...

R&D Expenditures and Geographical Sales Diversification

This paper empirically examines the role of diversification in export markets on firm-level R&D activities taking account of the potential endogeneity in this relationship. We show that geographical sales diversification across different regions of the world induces UK firms to increase their R&D expenditures, as firms must innovate and develop new products to maintain a competitive edge over their ...

Fiscal Policy Rules, Budget Deficits, and Forecasting Biases

In this paper, we analyze the impact fiscal policy rules have on budget deficits and forecasting biases in official budget outlooks. Persistent budget deficits and over-optimistic budget forecasts have been observed in many countries in the past, especially in the euro area. To prevent such developments from happening in the future, fiscal rules have been revised or implemented with the aim to strengthen ...

Between the Hammer and the Anvil: The Impact of Economic Sanctions and Oil Prices on Russia's Ruble

A Generalized Approach for Measuring the Marginal Social Costs of Road Transport in Europe

Social marginal cost pricing requires bottom-up calculations of social marginal costs for all circumstances. Because this is not practicable for policymaking, we suggest an approach to generalize available cost estimates and present results from this for two case studies. We conclude that in the peak period congestion costs are the most important externality of road use, and that accidents, wear and ...

Correcting for Self-Selection Based Endogeneity in Management Research: Review, Recommendations and Simulations

Foundational to management is the idea that organizational decisions are a function of expected outcomes; hence, the customary empirical approach to employ multivariate techniques that regress performance outcome variables on discrete measures of organizational choices (e.g., investments, trainings, strategies and other managerial decision variables) potentially suffer from self-selection based endogeneity ...

Power Markets with Renewables: New Perspectives for the European Target Model

We discuss at the European example how power market design evolves with increasing shares of intermittent renewables. Short-term markets and system operation have to accommodate for the different needs of renewable and conventional generation assets and flexibility options. This can be achieved by pooling resources over larger geographic areas through common auction platforms, realizing the full flexibility ...