Externe referierte Aufsätze

Infection Rates Matter – Especially for People from Lower Social Class: A Large-Scale Investigation of the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mental Health

The COVID-19 pandemic was a long-lasting and stressful event that had enormous psychological, economic, and social consequences. This study extends prior research by examining the relationship between infection rates and mental health as well as its dependency on social class. Therefore, we used large-scale data from a nationwide sample (N = 5,742) across two time periods in the COVID-19 pandemic in ...

Reacting to Changing Paradigms: How and Why to Reform Electricity Markets

The energy crisis and the accelerated transition to climate neutrality result in a shift from the traditional energy trilemma to an “energy quartet” across Europe. Firstly, the criteria of affordability, previously focused on short-term price developments, broadens to reliable affordability including in crises. Secondly, clean energy traditionally focused on clean production now extends to clean energy ...

Wealth in Couples: Introduction to the Special Issue

The assumption that economic resources are equally shared within households has been found to be untenable for income but is still often upheld for wealth. In this introduction to the special issue “Wealth in Couples”, we argue that within-household inequality in wealth is a pertinent and under-researched area that is ripe for development. To this end, we outline the relevance of wealth for demographic ...

The Signalling Channel of Negative Interest Rates

Negative policy rates can convince markets that deposit rates will remain lower-for-longer, even when current deposit rates are constrained by zero. This is the signalling channel of negative interest rates. We analyse the optimality and effectiveness of negative rates in the context of this novel transmission channel. In a stylized model, we prove two necessary conditions for optimality: time-consistency ...

Energy Transition Metals: Bottleneck for Net-Zero Emissions?

The energy transition requires substantial amounts of metals, including copper, nickel, cobalt, and lithium. Are these metals a bottleneck? We identify metal-specific demand shocks, estimate supply elasticities, and study the price impact of the transition in a structural scenario analysis. Prices of these four metals would reach previous historical peaks but for an unprecedented, sustained period ...

Beste Bedingungen für junge Ökonominnen und Ökonomen? Neue Daten und Empfehlungen der Arbeitsgruppe „Nachwuchs“ im Verein für Socialpolitik

Der Verein für Socialpolitik hat zur Bearbeitung seines Schwerpunktthemas „Nachwuchs“ für die Dauer der Kalenderjahre 2021–2022 eine Arbeitsgruppe eingerichtet – im Folgenden: AG Nachwuchs –, deren Aufgabe das Vorlegen eines umfassenden Berichts zur Situation der VWL-Promovierenden und -PostDocs im DACH-Raum ist. Gestützt auf Datenerhebungen und strukturierte Interviews formuliert die AG Nachwuchs ...

Assessing the Effects of District-Level Segregation on Meritocratic Beliefs in Germany

In recent years, researchers have grappled with the phenomenon that public demand for redistribution has not systematically increased in response to rising inequality. Meritocratic beliefs have been suggested as an explanation for this observation, because they can help legitimize inequalities. Past research has identified local-level inequality, segregation, or diversity as important factors for how ...

Green Premiums Are a Challenge and an Opportunity for Climate Policy Design: Comment

Adjusting green public support programmes to green premiums can reduce public spending, yet this is challenged by uncertainty. Underfunding green technologies can delay the green transition, and overfunding them can increase transition costs. Both risks of under- and overfunding can be reduced using responsive adjustments.

Putting MARS into Space: Non Linearities and Spatial Effects in Hedonic Models

Multivariate Adaptive Regression Spline (MARS) is a simple and powerful non-parametric machine learning algorithm that automatizes the selection of non-linear terms in regression models. In this study, we propose using MARS in a spatial regression framework to account for potential non-linearities and spatial effects in spatial regression models. Using a relatively large data set of 17,000 dwellings ...

Viral Shocks to the World Economy

We construct a global index of epidemic news based on text analysis of newspapers from 17 countries. We apply the index to study the economic consequences of epidemics on the world economy in structural vector autoregressions. Epidemic shocks exert significantly and persistently negative effects on output and prices that last for up to two years. There is no quick recovery and no overshooting. The ...

Geographical Balancing of Wind Power Decreases Storage Needs in a 100% Renewable European Power Sector

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, many countries plan to massively expand wind power and solar photovoltaic capacities. These variable renewable energy sources require additional flexibility in the power sector. Both geographical balancing enabled by interconnection and electricity storage can provide such flexibility. In a 100% renewable energy scenario of twelve central European countries, we investigate ...

Proximity to Refugee Accommodations Does not Affect Locals’ Attitudes toward Refugees: Evidence from Germany

With the so-called 'long summer of migration' of 2015, there was an urgent need to accommodate many refugees in Germany. This situation was framed as a 'refugee reception crisis', and it revealed diametrically opposed stances within German society. Within this debate, anti-refugee sentiment is often explained with the placement of nearby refugee reception facilities. Conclusive evidence of this claim ...

Bias in Tax Progressivity Estimates

Tax progressivity is central in public and political debates when questions of vertical equity are raised. Applied, structural research demands a simple way to capture it. A power function approximation delivers one parameter that captures the residual income elasticity - a summary measure of progressivity. This approximation is accurate, tractable, and interpretable, and hence immensely popular. The ...

Trade Liberalization along the Firm Size Distribution: The Case of the EU-South Korea FTA

Leading theories suggest that amongst continuing exporters, lower variable trade costs should boost exports of smaller firms by the same or greater percentage rate than larger firms. However, investigating the impact of the deep EU-South Korea FTA with French customs data, we find robust evidence to the contrary. Applying a triple-difference framework, we report that the FTA increased sales in the ...

Selective Bond Purchases – May the ECB Chose Winners and Losers?

The European Central Bank (ECB) is currently facing major challenges. Fragmentation of government bond yields across Member States of the European Economic and Monetary Union, based on different economic and fiscal policies, hampers a uniform transmission of monetary policy. At the same time, climate-related financial risks need to be addressed. In recent years, the ECB is meeting these challenges ...

Not Only a Mild Winter: German Consumers Change Their Behavior to Save Natural Gas: Commentary

Gender Gaps in Early Wage Expectations

Using detailed data from a unique survey of high school graduates in Germany, we document a gender gap in expected full-time earnings of more than 15%. We decompose this early gender gap and find that especially differences in coefficients help explain different expectations. In particular, the effects of having time for family as career motive and being first-generation college student are associated ...

The Inequity Z: Income Fairness Perceptions in Europe across the Income Distribution

Using data from the European Social Survey, we examine income fairness evaluations of 17,605 respondents from 28 countries. Respondents evaluated the fairness of their own incomes as well as the fairness of the incomes of the top and bottom income deciles in their countries. Depicted on a single graph, these income fairness evaluations take on a Z-shaped form, which we call the "inequity Z". The inequity ...

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 prices by capping rents: the Mietendeckel (rent freeze). The German Constitutional Court revoked the policy only one year later. Although successful in lowering rents during its duration, the consequences for Berlin’s rental market and close-by markets are per se not clear. This article evaluates the short-term causal supply-side ...

No Evidence for Transactional Effects between Religiosity and Self-Esteem in a Secular Country

This research tests the unique predictions of three different theoretical perspectives on the self-esteem benefits of religiosity: the religiosity-as-a-personal-relationship-with-a-higher-power perspective, the religiosity-as-a-resource perspective, and the religiosity-as-social-value perspective. To do so, we used random-intercept cross-lagged panel models and examined the between- and within-person ...