Vorträge des DIW Berlin

The Influence of Collusion on Price Changes: New Evidence from Major Cartel Cases

In this paper, we compare the distribution of price changes between collusive and non-collusive periods for ten major cartels. The first moments focus on previous research. We extend the discussion to the third (skewness) and fourth (kurtosis) moments. However, none of the above descriptive statistics can be considered as a robust test allowing a differentiation between competition and cartel....

Preferences for Childcare Policies: Theory and Evidence

We analyse preferences for public, private or mixed provision of childcare theoretically and empirically. We model childcare as a publicly provided private good. Richer households should prefer private provision to either pure public or mixed provision. If public provision redistributes from rich to poor, the rich should favour mixed over pure public provision, but if public provision...

Unemployment and Portfolio Choice: Does Persistence Matter?

We use a life cycle model of consumption and portfolio choice to study the effects of social security on the investment decisions of households for the European case. Our model is mainly based on the one developed by Cocco, Gomes, and Maenhout (2005). We extend it by unemployment risk using Markov chains to model the transition between different employment states. In contrast to most models in the...

Liquidity and Asset Prices: How Strong Are the Linkages?

The appropriate design of monetary policy in integrated financial markets is one of the most challenging areas for central banks. One hot topic is whether the rise in liquidity in recent years has contributed to the formation of price bubbles in asset markets. If strong linkages exist, the inclusion of asset prices in the monetary policy rule can eventually limit speculative runs and negative...

Testing for Convergence in Stock Markets: A Non-linear Factor Approach

This paper applies the Phillips and Sul (2007) method to test for convergence in stock returns to an extensive dataset including monthly stock price indices for five EU countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Ireland and the UK) as well as the US over the period 1973-2008. We carry out the analysis on both sectors and individual industries within sectors. As a first step, we use the Stock and...

Precautionary and Entrepreneurial Saving: New Evidence from German Households

Various studies have interpreted a positive correlation between income risk and wealth as evidence for large precautionary savings. However, the high estimates emerged from pooling non-entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs without controlling for heterogeneity. This paper provides evidence for Germany based on representative panel data including private wealth balance sheets. Entrepreneurs, who face...

Public Pensions, Changing Employment Patterns, and the Impact of Pension Reforms across Birth Cohorts: A Microsimulation Analysis for Germany

We analyze the impact of changing employment patterns and pension reforms on the future level of public pensions across birth cohorts in Germany. The analysis is based on a microsimulation model which accounts for cohort effects in individual employment and unemployment and earnings over the lifecycle as well as the differential impact of recent pension reforms on birth cohorts. Cohort effects...

Knapsack Procurement

A budget-constrained buyer wants to purchase items from a shortlisted set. Items are differentiated by observable quality and sellers have private reserve prices for their items. Sellers quote prices strategically, inducing a knapsack game. The buyer's problem is to select a subset of maximal quality. We propose a procurement mechanism that can be viewed as a game-theoretic extension of the greedy...

Expected Future Earnings, Taxation, and University Enrollment: A Microeconometric Model with Uncertainty

Taxation changes the expectations of prospective university students about their future level and uncertainty of after-tax income. To estimate the impact of taxes on university enrollment, we estimate a structural microeconometric model, in which a high-school graduate decides to enter university studies if expected lifetime utility from this choice is greater than that anticipated from starting...

Zur Bedeutung des Alterssicherungsvermögens für eine erweiterte Vermögensverteilungsrechung

Anwartschaften an Alterssicherungssysteme - gesetzliche, tarifliche und private - stellen erhebliche Vermögensbestände dar. Analysen zur personellen Vermögensverteilung haben dies bislang aus Datengründen allerdings nicht vollständig berücksichtigt. Nach neuen Berechnungen auf Basis der 2007 erhobenen Vermögensdaten des Sozio-oekonomischen Panels (SOEP) beliefen sich die gesamten Renten- und...

In Search of the Marginal Entrepreneur: Benchmarking Regulatory Frameworks in Their Effect on Entrepreneurship

This paper develops a benchmarking method in order to assess how legal and regulatory frameworks provide adequate incentives for entrepreneurship. The analysis is based on a dataset that combines individual data on entrepreneurship with indicators about the restrictiveness of regulations. The subjective aspect of entrepreneurial ventures is controlled for using a variable that captures the...

Global Oil Markets Revisited: Cartel or Stackelberg Market?

This paper investigates the existence of market power and the sequentiality of games in the crude oil market. In particular, we examine whether Saudi Arabia acts as a Stackelberg leader or in a simultaneous-move framework, in a number of market power scenarios ranging from perfect competition to cartel. We develop a numerical simulation model that is formulated as a complementarity problem,...

Changes in Compulsory Schooling and the Causal Effect of Education on Health

In this paper, we investigate the causal effect of years of schooling on health and health-related behavior in West Germany. We apply an instrumental variables approach using changes in compulsory schooling laws which took place from 1949 to 1969 as natural experiments. These law changed generate exogenous variation in years of schooling both across states and over time. We find evidence for a...

Changes in Family Structure and Employment Pattern: Do They Blend with Early Childhood Outcomes?

As presented in recent literature (see e.g. Cunha and Heckman 2007, 2009), parental environment considerably influences child development. This is particularly true for the early years. In this paper we focus on the stability of the parental environment. We analyze partner and employment changes for mothers with children aged two to six. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP...

20 Years of German Unification: Evidence on Income Convergence and Heterogeneity

We analyse the convergence and heterogeneity of living standards between East and West Germany since unification. Based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP), we compare total individual income of permanent adult residents, including retirees and the unemployed, of East and West Germany over the fifteen years for which data are available. Using a fixed effects vector decomposition...

Building the Minimum Wage in Germany: Germany¿s First Sectoral Minimum Wage and Its Impact on Wages in the Construction Industry

This study analyzes the impact of the introduction of the first sectoral minimum wage in 1997 in the German construction sector on hourly wages and their distribution. The minimum wage was introduced only in certain sub-sectors of the industry and just blue-collar workers were eligible. In the setting of a natural experiment neighboring 4-digit-industries and white-collar workers are used as...

Risk Attitudes and Investment Decisions across European Countries: Are Women More Conservative Investors Than Men?

This study questions the popular stereotype that women are more risk averse than men in their financial investment decisions. The analysis is based on micro-level data from large-scale surveys of private households in five European countries. In our analysis of investment decisions, we directly account for individuals' self-perceived willingness to take financial risks. The empirical evidence we...

Dateninfrastruktur zur Familienpolitik: Panel

Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Beruf - ein neuer Schwerpunkt der deutschen Familienpolitik?: Keynote Speech

The Strategic Use of Private Quality Standards in Vertical Relations

This paper highlights the strategic role of private quality standards in vertical relations. Considering two symmetric downstream firms that are exclusively supplied by a finite number of upstream firms, we show that there exist asymmetric equilibria in the downstream firms' quality requirements. While one downstream firm has an incentive to exaggerate her quality requirements to weaken her...