Vorträge des DIW Berlin

Early Retirement Eligibility and Employment Behavior: Evidence from a Cohort Based Pension Reform

Risk and Uncertainty in Sovereign Debt Markets

We assess the relationship between macroeconomic uncertainty and risk aversion and their role for the pricing of sovereign debt. A theoretical model of sovereign default is used to tell apart the effects of risk aversion and uncertainty for bond prices. We find that investors' risk aversion is positively affected by an increase in uncertainty, indicating toward uncertainty constituting a root...

Unconventional Monetary Policy, Fiscal Side Effects, and Euro Area (Im)balances

The Role of Time Preferences in Educational Decision Making

Testing for Identification in SVAR-GARCH Models: Reconsidering the Impact of Monetary Shocks on Exchange Rates

Changes in residual volatility in vector autoregressive (VAR) models can be used for identifying structural shocks in a structural VAR analysis. Testable conditions are given for full identification for the case where the volatility changes can be modelled by a multivariate GARCH process. Formal statistical tests are presented for identification and their small sample properties are investigated...

Calculating Joint Confidence Bands for Impulse Response Functions Using Highest Density Regions

This paper proposes a new non-parametric method of constructing joint confidence bands for impulse response functions of vector autoregressive models. The estimation uncertainty is captured by means of bootstrapping and the highest density region (HDR) approach is used to construct the bands. A Monte Carlo comparison of the HDR bands with existing alternatives shows that the former are competitive...

Assessing Identifying Restrictions in SVAR Models

This paper proposes a Bayesian approach to assess if the data support candidate set-identifying restrictions in Vector Autoregressive models. I study the case of sign restrictions. The researcher expresses her uncertainty regarding the validity of the restrictions using a prior distribution that covers the parameter space both where the restrictions are satisfied and where they are not satisfied....

Identifying Uncertainty Shocks Using the Price of Gold

We propose a new instrument to identify the impact of uncertainty shocks in a SVAR model with external instruments. We construct the instrument for uncertainty shocks by exploiting variations in the price of gold around selected events. The events capture periods of changes in uncertainty unrelated to other macroeconomic shocks. The variations in the price of gold around such events provide a...

Labor Supply of Mothers: The Role of Time Discounting

Restrictions Search for Panel VARs

On the Importance of Testing Structural Identification Schemes and the Potential Consequences of Incorrectly Identified Models

Identification schemes are of essential importance in structural analysis. This paper focuses on testing a commonly used long-run structural parameter identification scheme claiming to identify fundamental and non-fundamental shocks to stock prices. Five related widely used structural models on assessing stock price determinants are considered. All models are either specified in vector error...

Does the Presence of Wind Turbines Have Negative Externalities for People in Their Surroundings? Evidence from Well-Being Data

Throughout the world, governments foster the deployment of wind power. The economic rationale behind these policies is to reduce negative externalities of conventional technologies, most notably CO2 emissions. Wind turbines, however, are not free of externalities themselves, particularly interference with landscape aesthetics. We quantify the negative externalities associated with the presence of...

Unilateral Emission Pricing and OPEC's Behaviour

Unilateral climate policies involve the risk of carbon leakage, driven by price changes in the oil market and other international markets. We have shown in previous analysis that OPEC may have an incentive to increase the oil price as a response to EU climate policy, thereby retaining resource rents and turning leakage through the oil market negative. In this paper, we examine the implications of...

Does the EU ETS Cause Carbon Leakage in European Manufacturing? A Sector-Level Analysis

Exploring the Relationship between Environmentally Related Taxes and Inequality in Income Sources: An Empirical Cross-Country Analysis

CO2 Emission Intensity and Exporting: Evidence from German Firm-Level Data

Renewable Energy and the Pricing of Electricity Futures

An Economic Assessment of Soil Carbon Sequestration with Biochar in Germany

Biochar is a carbon-rich solid obtained from the heating of biomass in the (near) absence of oxygen in a process called pyrolysis. Its soil incorporation is increasingly discussed as a means to sequester carbon in soils and, thus, to help mitigate climate change. When deployed in agricultural soils in Germany, it has been found by Teichmann (2014a, b) that slow-pyrolysis biochar from a wide...

Free Allocation and the Endowment Effect in Cap-and-Trade Systems: Evidence from the European Electricity Sector

Independence of installation-level emissions from allocations constitutes a necessary condition for the cost-effectiveness of a cap-and-trade system. An endowment effect, i.e. a causal relationship between allocations and emissions, indicates a loss of cost effectiveness due to free allocation. The issue is relevant to the EU ETS, where a large share of the total allocation occurs for free. This...

Anforderungen an die Energiestatistiken aus Sicht der Energiebilanzen