Externe referierte Aufsätze

Comparing the Early Research Performance of PhD Graduates in Labor Economics in Europe and the USA

This paper analyzes the early research performance of PhD graduates in labor economics, addressing the following questions: Are there major productivity differences between graduates from American and European institutions? If so, how relevant is the quality of the training received (i.e. ranking of institution and supervisor) and the research environment inthe subsequent job placement institution? ...

Copayments for Ambulatory Care in Germany: A Natural Experiment Using a Difference-in-Difference Approach

In response to increasing health expenditures and a high number of physician visits, the German government introduced a copayment for ambulatory care in 2004 for individuals with statutory health insurance (SHI). Because persons with private insurance were exempt from the copayments, this health-care reform can be regarded as a natural experiment. We used a difference-in-difference approach to examine ...

Do Regional Price Levels Converge?

We investigate price level convergence on the base of regional data for 439 German districts.. - First and second generation tests are applied to the overall consumer price index as well as to the index without housing prices. They indicate a lack of regional price convergence. The. - second generation tests reveal that the source of the unit root is likely common for all regions. One rationale of ...

Will the Stress Tests for Banks Improve the Stability of Financial Markets?

Your House, Your Car, Your Education: The Socioeconomic Situation of the Neighborhood and Its Impact on Life Satisfaction in Germany

This study deals with the impact of socioeconomic conditions and social integration into a local neighborhood on individual life satisfaction in Germany. While the majority of ecological studies to date are based on very broad neighborhood concepts, using large research units for defining neighborhood the present study contains micro-geographic information on a representative sample of private households ...

Determinants of Households' Space Heating Type: A Discrete Choice Analysis for German Households

Considering the increasing attention on efficient use of energy, it becomes vitally important to understand the energy-related behavior of households. This article presents empirical evidence on the determinants of the space heating technology applied by a household. Three sets of variables are examined as potential influences - building, socio-economic, and regional characteristics. To highlight both ...

Carbon Markets and Technological Innovation

This paper examines the effects of firm-level innovation in carbon-abatement technologies on optimal cap-and-trade schemes with and without price controls. We characterize optimal cap-and-trade regulation with a price cap and a price floor, and compare it to the special cases of pure taxation and a simple emissions cap. Innovation shifts the tradeoff between price- and quantity-based instruments towards ...

Do Smart Parents Raise Smart Children? The Intergenerational Transmission of Cognitive Abilties

Complementing prior research on income and educational mobility, we examine the intergenerational transmission of cognitive abilities. We find that individuals' cognitive skills are positively related to their parents' abilities, despite controlling for educational attainment and family background. Differentiating between mothers' and fathers' IQ transmission, we find different effects on the cognition ...

Schooling and Citizenship in a Young Democracy: Evidence from Postwar Germany

This paper examines whether schooling has a causal impact on individuals' political behavior. Between 1949 and 1969, the number of compulsory years of schooling in the Federal Republic of Germany was gradually increased across all federal states. These legislative changes provide an opportunity to investigate the causal impact of schooling on political behavior. Years of schooling are found to be positively ...

Changing from PAPI to CAPI: Introducing CAPI in a Longitudinal Study

This article examines the implications of moving to Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) for data quality by analyzing the transition from Paper-and-Pencil (PAPI) to Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) on a subsample of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) conducted using an "experimental design" in Wave 1. The 2,000 addresses for the sample E of SOEP were split into two subsamples ...

Les descendants de migrants maghrébins en France et turcs en Allemagne: deux types de mise à distance sociale

Wages and Ageing: Is There Evidence for the "Inverse-U" Profile?

How individual wages change with time is one of the crucial determinants of labour market decisions including the timing of retirement. The focus of this paper is the relationship between age and wages with special attention given to individuals nearing retirement. The analysis is presented in a comparative context for Britain and Germany looking at two longitudinal data sets (BHPS and SOEP, respectively) ...

Telling the Truth May Not Pay Off: An Empirical Study of Centralized University Admissions in Germany

Matching university places to students is not as clear cut or as straightforward as it ought to be. By investigating the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse for university admissions in medicine and related subjects, we show that a procedure designed to give an advantage to students with excellent school grades actually harms them. The reason is that the three-step process employed ...

Modeling and Analysis of the International Steam Coal Trade

Coal continues to play an important role in the global energy sector and with the increase in international trade a global market for steam coal has developed. We investigate market structure and recent price developments with a numerical modeling approach and develop two partial equilibrium models, a quantity based model and a model additionally incorporating energy values. We compare two possible ...

The World Gas Model: A Multi-Period Mixed Complementary Model for the Global Natural Gas Market

We provide the description, mathematical formulation and illustrative results of the World Gas Model, a multi-period complementarity model for the global natural gas market with explicit consideration of market power in the upstream market. Market players include producers, traders, pipeline and storage operators, LNG (liquefied natural gas) liquefiers and regasifiers as well as marketers. The model ...

Conflict and Education Demand in the Basque Region

The relationship between conflict and education has been studied before. However, previous authors have always focused strongly on the supply-side effects, whereas this article examines the influence of conflict on the demand for education. It is theoretically shown that, under relatively general conditions, individuals living in a conflict area have an incentive to increase their level of education ...

The Impact of Risk Attitudes on Entrepreneurial Survival

Risk attitudes influence the complete life cycle of entrepreneurs. Whereas recent research underpins the theoretical proposition of a positive correlation between risk attitudes and the decision to become self-employed, the effects on survival are not as straightforward. Psychological research posits an inverse U-shaped relationship between risk attitudes and entrepreneurial survival. On the basis ...

Late-Life Decline in Well-Being across Adulthood in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States: Something Is Seriously Wrong at the End of Life

Throughout adulthood and old age, levels of well-being appear to remain relatively stable. However, evidence is emerging that late in life well-being declines considerably. Using long-term longitudinal data of deceased participants in national samples from Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, we examined how long this period lasts. In all 3 nations and across the adult age range, well-being ...

Accidents, Liability Obligations and Monopolized Markets for Spare Parts

We analyze the effects of accidents and liability obligations on the incentives of car manufacturers to monopolize the markets for their spare parts. We show that monopolized markets for spare parts lead to inefficiently high prices for spare parts. Furthermore, monopolization induces the manufacturers to choose inefficiently high qualities. The key for these results is the observation that high prices ...

Do Forecasters Inform or Reassure? Evaluation of the German Real-Time Data

The paper evaluates the quality of the German national accounting data (GDP and its use-side components) as measured by the magnitude and dispersion of the forecast / revision errors. It is demonstrated that government consumption series are the least reliable, whereas real GDP and real private consumption data are the most reliable. In addition, early forecasts of GDP, private consumption, and investment ...