Externe referierte Aufsätze

How to Counter Union Power? Equilibrium Mergers in International Oligopoly

We re-examine the common wisdom that cross-border mergers are the most effective merger strategy for firms facing powerful unions. In contrast, we obtain a domestic merger outcome whenever firms are sufficiently heterogeneous (in terms of productive efficiency and product differentiation). A domestic merger unfolds a “wage-unifying” effect which limits the union's ability to extract rents. When products ...

Family Instability and Locus of Control in Adolescence

Investigating the impact of family instability is important as more and more children experience different family changes in many industrialized countries. In this paper we examine the dynamics of family structure, looking at the potential effect of yearly maternal partnership transitions on adolescents’ locus of control. We aim at combining research on family instability with research on non-cognitive ...

Credit Rating Agency Downgrades and the Eurozone Sovereign Debt Crises

This paper studies the reaction of the Euro's value against major currencies to sovereign rating announcements from Moody's, S&P and Fitch CRAs during the Eurozone debt crisis in 2010–2012 based on event study methodology combined with GARCH models. We also analyze how the yields of French, Italian, German and Spanish government long-term bonds were affected by CRA announcements. Our results reveal ...

The Self-Medication Hypothesis: Evidence from Terrorism and Cigarette Accessibility

We use single equation and system instrumental variable models to explore if individuals smoke during times of stress (the motivation effect) and if they are successful in self-medicating short-term stress (the self-medication effect). Short-term stress is a powerful motivator of smoking, and the decision to smoke could trigger biological feedback that immediately reduces short-term stress. We use ...

Extreme Weather Events and Child Height: Evidence from Mongolia

We provide new evidence on the impact of one severe weather event on child height in Mongolia. While previous studies mostly focus on rainfall shocks in tropical or dry climate areas, our focus is on the extremely harsh winter that hit Mongolia in 2009–10. The severe winter—locally referred to as a dzud—caused catastrophic damage and resulted in the death of 10.3 million livestock. Our analysis identifies ...

Bubble Thy Neighbour: Portfolio Effects and Externalities from Capital Controls

We use changes in Brazil's tax on capital inflows from 2006 to 2013 to test for direct portfolio effects and externalities from capital controls on investor portfolios. We find that an increase in Brazil's tax on foreign investment in bonds causes fund managers to significantly decrease their portfolio allocations to Brazil in both bonds and equities. Fund managers simultaneously increase allocations ...

Effective Reminders

We study the effects of reminders on people’s behavior in investment activities characterized by up-front costs and delayed benefits, such as getting an education and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. We conduct a field experiment and show that simple weekly reminders induce users of a gym to substantially increase their gym attendance over an extensive period. Users’ response to reminders is immediate ...

Power Markets with Renewables: New Perspectives for the European Target Model

We discuss at the European example how power market design evolves with increasing shares of intermittent renewables. Short-term markets and system operation have to accommodate for the different needs of renewable and conventional generation assets and flexibility options. This can be achieved by pooling resources over larger geographic areas through common auction platforms, realizing the full flexibility ...

War, Housing Rents, and Free Market: A Case of Berlin's Rental Housing Market during World War I

New archival evidence on housing rents in Berlin over 1909–1917 is presented. The data are extracted from newspaper announcements and georeferenced. Using hedonic regressions, quality-adjusted rent indices are constructed and employed to analyze the rental dynamics during World War I, when housing market experienced several shocks. The outbreak of the war led to an outflow of men from cities. Toward ...

Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies 74 Loci Associated with Educational Attainment

Educational attainment is strongly influenced by social and other environmental factors, but genetic factors are estimated to account for at least 20% of the variation across individuals1. Here we report the results of a genome-wide association study (GWAS) for educational attainment that extends our earlier discovery sample1, 2 of 101,069 individuals to 293,723 individuals, and a replication study ...

The Link between R&D, Innovation and Productivity: Are Micro Firms Different?

Genetic Variants Associated with Subjective Well-Being, Depressive Symptoms, and Neuroticism Identified through Genome-Wide Analyses

Very few genetic variants have been associated with depression and neuroticism, likely because of limitations on sample size in previous studies. Subjective well-being, a phenotype that is genetically correlated with both of these traits, has not yet been studied with genome-wide data. We conducted genome-wide association studies of three phenotypes: subjective well-being (n = 298,420), depressive ...

When Bad Moods May Not Be So Bad: Valuing Negative Affect Is Associated with Weakened Affect-Health Links

Bad moods are considered “bad” not only because they may be aversive experiences in and of themselves, but also because they are associated with poorer psychosocial functioning and health. We propose that people differ in their negative affect valuation (NAV; the extent to which negative affective states are valued as pleasant, useful/helpful, appropriate, and meaningful experiences) and that affect–health ...

Risks in Global Natural Gas Markets: Investment, Hedging and Trade

Recent supply security concerns in Europe have revived interest into the natural gas market. We investigate infrastructure investment and trade in an imperfect market structure for various possible risks for both supply and demand. We focus on three possible scenarios in a stochastic global gas market model: (i) transit of Russian gas via Ukraine that may be disrupted from 2020 on; (ii) natural gas ...

Shaking Dutch Grounds Won't Shatter the European Gas Market

The Netherlands have been a pivotal supplier in Western European natural gas markets in the last decades. Recent analyses show that the Netherlands would play an important role in replacing Russian supplies in Germany and France in case of a Russian export disruption. Lately, however, the Netherlands have suffered from a series of earthquakes that are related to the natural gas production in the major ...

The European Debt Crisis and Fiscal Reactions in Europe 2000-2014

After the outbreak of the global financial crisis, some governments in the EU experienced serious fiscal problems, while others were less affected. This paper seeks to shed light on the divergent fiscal performance in the EU countries before and after the outbreak of the crisis. Fiscal reaction functions of the primary balance are estimated for different groups of EU countries using quarterly data ...

Liquidity Requirements: A Double-Edged Sword

This paper shows that bank liquidity regulation may be a "double-edged sword." Under certain conditions, it may hamper, rather than strengthen, a bank’s resilience to financial stress. The reason is the existence of two opposing effects of liquidity regulation, a liquidity effect and a solvency effect. The liquidity effect arises because a bank mitigates its risk of illiquidity when it increases its ...

Information Flows in Foreign Exchange Markets: Dissecting Customer Currency Trades

We study the information in order flows in the world's largest over-the-counter market, the foreign exchange (FX) market. The analysis draws on a data set covering a broad cross-section of currencies and different customer segments of FX end-users. The results suggest that order flows are highly informative about future exchange rates and provide significant economic value. We also find that different ...

Erbschaft und Eigenleistung im Vermögen der Deutschen: eine Verteilungsanalyse

Wir gehen der Frage nach, ob die gegenwärtige Vermögensungleichheit in Deutschland auf eine Dominanz von Erbschaften im oberen Bereich der Verteilung zurückzuführen ist. Auf Basis von Daten der Deutschen Bundesbank zeigt sich, dass die Vermögen der Deutschen zu etwa zwei Dritteln auf Eigenleistung und zu etwa einem Drittel auf Erbschaft zurückgehen. Diese Proportion verändert sich entlang der Vermögensverteilung ...

Housing Policy in Soviet Russia and Germany between the Two World Wars: Comparative Analysis of Two Systems

World War I played a key role in shaping modern housing policy. While in the pre-War era, there was virtually no housing policy, hostilities led to an almost immediate and comprehensive state intervention in the housing market, particularly among those engaged in the war. Originally, Russia went the same way as the other countries. However, after the communists seized power in November 1917, they started ...