Vorträge des DIW Berlin

Economic Resilience of German Regions

Think National, Forecast Local: A Case Study of 71 German Urban Housing Markets

Does Personalized Feedback Increase Respondent Motivation?

Puncturing Inequalities: A Configurational Analysis of Upward Mobility

Cognitive Skills, Non-Cognitive Skills and Family Background: Evidence from Sibling Correlations

This paper estimates sibling correlations in cognitive skills and non-cognitive skills to evaluate the importance of family background for skill formation. The study is based on a large representative German dataset, which includes IQ test scores and measures of noncognitive skills. Using a Restricted Maximum Likelihood model we find substantial influences of family background on the formation of...

How Does Education Improve Cognitive Skills? Instructional Time versus Timing of Instruction

This paper investigates two mechanisms through which education may affect cognitive skills in adolescence: the role of instructional quantity and the timing ofinstruction with respect to age. To identify causal effects, I exploit a school reform carried out at the state level in Germany as a quasi-natural experiment: between 2001 and 2007, the academic-track high school (Gymnasium) was reduced...

Job Search Expectations

An Analysis of Allowance Banking in the EU ETS

The existence of some 2 billion unused EU Allowances (EUAs) at the end of Phase II of the EU.s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) has sparked considerable debate about structural shortcomings of the EU ETS. However, there has been a surprising lack of interest in considering the accumulation of EUAs in light of the theory of intertemporal permit trading, i.e. allowance banking. In this paper we...

The Effect of Peer Observation on Consumption Choices: Experimental Evidence

This paper uses a clean experiment to investigate the impact of peer observation on the consumption decisions of rural households in Thailand. We find that those groups that observe each other show lower within group standard deviation in their decisions. At the same time, we also find that individual choice is influenced by group choice. We find that unfamiliarity with product is counteracted by...

Weather Shocks and Education in Mongolia

This paper analyzes the impact of extreme weather shocks on education outcomes in Mongolia. Our focus is on particularly harsh winters that caused mass livestock mortality (called dzud in Mongolian) between 1999-2002 and in 2009/2010. The timing of events allows us to analyze both short- and long-term effects of weather shocks on education. Our analysis disentangles the effects by age of exposure....

Uncertainty Shocks and Non-fundamental Debt Crises: An Ambiguity Approach

Inequality and Defined Benefit Pensions When Life Expectancy Is Heterogeneous

In this paper, we analyze how life expectancy-driven redistribution of income through a defined pension benefit system impacts on inequality in annual consumption. Our analysis combines a methodology that quantifies life expectancy-driven redistribution through the pension system with a structural life-cycle model in which labor supply, retirement and consumption decisions respond to changes in...

Peer Effects in Labour Supply: Evidence from Marginal Employment

Labour supply in the market for marginal employment in Germany is strongly influenced by nonlinearity in the tax schedule - even for individuals to whom this tax schedule does not apply. We present a simple job search model in which workers are influenced by their peers' labour supply in equilibrium. Our model includes two fundamental constraints: contract adjustment costs and limited information...

The Greener, the Happier? The Effects of Urban Green and Abandoned Areas on Residential Well-Being

This paper investigates the effects of urban green and abandoned areas on residential well-being in major German cities, using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) for the time period between 2000 and 2012 and cross-section datafrom the European Urban Atlas (EUA) for the year 2006. Using a Geographical Information System (GIS), it calculates the distance to urban green and...

Sowing the Wind and Reaping the Whirlwind? The Effect of Wind Turbines on Residential Well-Being

We investigate the effect of the physical presence of wind turbines on residential well-being in Germany, using panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and a unique novel panel data set on more than 20,000 wind turbines for the time period between 2000 and 2012. Using a Geographical Information System (GIS), we calculate the proximity between households and the nearest wind turbine...

Labor Supply under Working Hours Constraints: Assessing the Potential of a Family Working Time Benefit in Germany

Child Care Expansion and Mothers' Labor Supply: Is There a Causal Link?

Offset Credits in the EU Emissions Trading System: A Firm-Level Evaluation of Transaction Costs

Learning from Unrealized versus Realized Prices

Our market experiment investigates the extent to which traders learn from the price, differentiating between situations where orders are submitted before versus after the price has realized. When market participants have to submit their bids conditional on the price, they show a bias by reacting only to their private information and not to the hypothetical value of the price. In a sequential...

Preference for College and Educational Inequality: Do Students Lack Information? Evidence from a Randomized Controlled Trial