Discussion Papers

Russia's Debt Crisis and the Unofficial Economy

Russia's foreign debt problems worsened substantially after the financial crisis of 1998. The paper focuses on the key role of the government in servicing foreign debt and promoting institution building by showing how foreign debt influences the choice between official and unofficial taxation. The enterprise sector is assumed to reallocate its resources between domestic investment and capital flight. ...

Leading Indicators of German Business Cycles: An Assessment of Properties

Brauchbare Frühindikatoren sollten folgende Eigenschaften besitzen: (1) Die konjunkturellen Bewegungen des Frühindikators sollten denen der Referenzreihe folgen. (2) Die Beziehung zwischen den Reihen sollte stabil und signifikant sein. (3) Die Einbeziehung des Indikators sollte die Out-of-sample-Prognose verbessern. Unsere Untersuchung testet diese Anforderungen für deutsche Daten. Dazu werden Methoden ...

Methodische und empirische Grundlagen der vierteljährlichen volkswirtschaftlichen Gesamtrechnung des Deutschen Instituts für Wirtschaftsforschung

Die vierteljährliche volkswirtschaftliche Gesamtrechnung (VGR) ist das wichtigste Analyse- und Prognose-Instrument des Konjunkturforschers. Das DIW stellt dafür schon seit vielen Jahren - in Ergänzung zu den Daten des Statistischen Bundesamtes (StaBu) - ein geschlossenes Kreislaufsystem zur Beobachtung von Entstehung, Verteilung, Verwendung und Umverteilung des gesamtwirtschaftlichen Einkommens (des ...

Health Care Reform: Separating Insurance from Income Redistribution

Most systems of health care financing in EU member states currently include elements of income redistribution. The paper analyzes the effects of shifting this kind of redistribution to the tax system and argues that this reform could create two types of efficiency gains. On the expenditure side, it would facilitate the adoption of more incentive-compatible insurance contracts, for example through the ...

Money Demand in Europe: Evidence from the Past

The conditions under which European monetary policy is likely to be conducted are investigated by means of multi-variate time series modelling using aggregated data of all eleven European Monetary Union member states. A cointegration analysis identifies two stable long-run relationships within a set of five key macroeconomic variables, one of which can be interpreted as a money demand function and ...

Self-Rated Health and Changes in Self-Rated Health as Predictors of Mortality: First Evidence from German Panel Data

Empirical evidence from several countries reveals that self-rated health is a valid predictor of mortality. So far, there have been no studies conducted for Germany. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (GSOEP) we confirm the relationship between self-rated health and mortality for Germany. In addition the GSOEP data enable an exploration of the trajectory hypothesis.

Demographic Change, Endogenous Labor Supply and the Political Feasibility of Pension Reform

Why Do People Still Live in East Germany?

In 1997 GDP per capita in East Germany was 57% of that of West Germany, wage rates were 75% of western levels, and the unemployment rate was at least double the western rate of 7.8%. One would expect that if capital flows and trade in goods failed to bring convergence, labor flows would respond, enhancing overall efficiency. Yet net emigration from East Germany has fallen from high levels in 1989-1990 ...

Reform of the Public Pension System in Germany

This paper studies the current crisis in the German pension system and discusses the various reform proposals.

Die Zusammenarbeit von Staat und Markt in der Sozialpolitik: das Beispiel Betreuungsgutscheine und Qualitätsregulierung für die institutionelle Kinderbetreuung

Combining an Ongoing Panel with a New Cross-Sectional Sample

In this paper, a weight is derived for the calculation of design based estimators of totals, means and proportions using the ongoing German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) and a new cross-sectional sample. In the first part of the paper, the selection schemes of the subsamples A, B, C and D of the ongoing panel and of the new sample (sample E) are described. Using some similarity assumptions and starting ...

Derivation of Design Weights: The Case of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP)

Design-based estimators of totals, means or proportions in finite populations generally are functions of weighted sums. If each element selected into the sample is also observed, then for the calculation of the pi-estimator these weights are just the inverse inclusion probabilities of the elements. However, if e.g. nonresponse or attrition over time occurs, calculation of these weights also includes ...

Documentation of Sample Sizes and Panel Attrition in the German Socio Economic Panel (GSOEP) 1984 until 1998

Zur Logik der Rentenanpassung: ein konstitutionenökonomischer Vorschlag

Lohnspreizung und Arbeitslosigkeit: theoretische Erklärungsansätze und Stand empirischer Forschung

The origin of increasing income inequality and strategies to influence this unwarranted development has stimulated major debates during the 1990s under economists, politicians and the general public in a number of OECD countries and the U.S. in particular. While this topic includes a broader agenda the focus of our paper is on possible sources of increasing wage inequality. The paper summarizes major ...

Banking Crises in Transition Countries - Theory and Empirical Evidence: The Case of Russia

Das Papier gibt zunächst einen Überblick über die Ursachen und ökonomischen Kosten der Bankenkrise in Rußland, die im Jahr 1998 ausbrach. Eine Analyse des Verhaltens russischer Banken im Zeitraum 1998 bis 1999 zeigt, daß diese sich relativ konservativ bezüglich ihrer Kreditvergabe verhielten. Dies kann ein überraschendes Ergebnis sein aus folgenden Gründen: Die Bankenaufsicht hatte bisher eine relativ ...

Zum wirtschaftspolitischen Reformfortschritt der Ukraine und zur Konditionalität der westlichen Hilfe

Die Rezession hielt in der Ukraine seit Beginn der Transformation an. Gleichzeitig zeigen Indikatoren für den ordnungspolitischen Transformationsfortschritt, daß die Ukraine zu der Gruppe weniger östlicher Transformationsländer gehört, die einen nur sehr geringen Fortschritt bei der Umsetzung solcher Reformen zu verzeichnen haben. Das Papier versucht, wesentliche Charakteristika der makroökonomischen ...

The Availability of Child Care and Mothers' Employment in West Germany

There is a vast empirical literature investigating the effects of child care costs on female employment. Day care costs are usually treated as a reduction in female wages, which is supposed to negatively affect a woman's propensity to participate in the labor market. In this paper, we argue that due to peculiarities of the German day care regime, an analysis of the effects of child care on mothers' ...

Zur Dynamik von Erwerbstätigkeit und ehrenamtlichen Engagement in Deutschland

Subventionen im Maschinenbau