Thema Regionalwirtschaft

The Long-Run Effects of Immigration: Evidence across a Barrier to Refugee Settlement

After the end of World War II in 1945, millions of refugees arrived in what in 1949 became the Federal Republic of Germany. We examine their effect on today’s productivity, wages, income, rents, education, and population density at the municipality level. Our identification strategy is based on a spatial discontinuity in refugee settlement at the border between the French and US occupation zones in ...

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The Impact of the Russian-Ukrainian War on Europe’s Forest-Based Bioeconomy

Der russisch-ukrainische Krieg verstärkt die Belastung der Wälder. Internationale Sanktionen treffen Exporte aus Russland und Weißrussland, und der Krieg beeinträchtigt die Holzwirtschaft in der Ukraine stark. Diese drei Länder machten im Jahr 2021 zusammen ein Viertel des weltweiten Holzhandels aus, und Russland war der weltweit größte Exporteur von Nadelholz. Der Krieg erhöht die Abhängigkeit der ...

Cost and Productivity Effects of Demographic Changes on Local Water Service

We investigate the impact of demographic changes on local public services taking the case of water service. We apply a structural production function approach to a large panel of German water utilities between 2003 and 2014. Exploring variation of population density and the population age structure across service areas and over time, we provide evidence that demographics and their changes significantly ...

Green Bonds’ Reputation Effect and Its Impact on the Financing Costs of the Real Estate Sector

This paper explores the effect of a firm’s reputation of being a green bond issuer on its financing costs. Using a sample of 73 listed Swedish real estate companies issuing in total about 1500 bonds over the period from 2011 till 2021, difference-in-difference analyses and instrumental variable estimations are applied to identify the causal impact of frequent green vis-à-vis frequent non-green bond ...

Do Individuals Adapt to All Types of Housing Transitions?

This paper provides one of the first tests of adaptation to the complete set of residential transitions. We use long-run SOEP panel data and consider the impact of all housing transitions, whether or not they involve a change in housing tenure or geographical movement, on both life satisfaction and housing satisfaction. Controlling for individual characteristics, some residential transitions affect ...

Lessons from an Aborted Second-Generation Rent Control in Catalonia

This study investigates the effects of short-lived rent control regulations introduced in Catalonia in September 2020 and revoked in March 2022. Using the microdata of the largest Spanish housing advertisement portal idealista between January 2017 and May 2022, we analyze the dynamics of prices and supply for dwellings offered for rent and for sale. We also examine separately the rental and sales markets. ...

Forward to the Past: Short-Term Effects of the Rent Freeze in Berlin

In 2020, Berlin introduced a rigorous rent-control policy responding to soaring rents by setting a cap on rental prices: the Mietendeckel (rent freeze). The policy was revoked one year later by the German Constitutional Court. Although successful in reducing rents during its duration, the consequences for Berlin’s rental market and adjacent municipalities are not clear. In this paper we evaluate the ...

House Price Expectations

This study examines short-, medium-, and long-run price expectations in housing markets. We derive and test six hypothesis about the incidence, formation, and relevance of price expectations. To do so, we use data from a tailored household survey, past sale and rental offerings, satellites, and from an information RCT. As novel findings, we show that price expectations exhibit mean reversion in the ...

Location, Location, Location: The Role of Objective Neighborhood Characteristics for Perceptions of Control

Introduction: Control beliefs can protect against age-related declines in functioning. It is unclear whether neighborhood characteristics shape how much control people perceive over their life. This article studies associations of neighborhood characteristics with control beliefs of residents of a diverse metropolitan area (Berlin, Germany). Methods: We combine self-report data about perceptions of ...