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DIW Discussion Papers 1129 / 2011
We develop a composite indicator measuring the performance of national innovation systems. The indicator takes into account both "hard" factors that are quantifiable (such as R&D spending, number of patents) and "soft" factors like the assessment of preconditions for innovation by managers. We apply the methodology to a set of 17 industrialized countries on a yearly basis between 2007 and 2009. The ...
2011| Heike Belitz, Marius Clemens, Christian von Hirschhausen, Jens Schmidt-Ehmcke, Axel Werwatz, Petra Zloczysti
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DIW Discussion Papers 1128 / 2011
This paper investigates the impact of new firms' quality on the magnitude of their employment effects. Our results clearly show that the quality of start-ups, measured by their affiliation with sectors and innovative industries, strongly influences the direct and the overall employment contribution of new firms. In particular, start-ups in manufacturing industries generate larger direct and overall ...
2011| Michael Fritsch, Alexandra Schroeter
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DIW Discussion Papers 1127 / 2011
This paper reviews the current state of knowledge about the effect of new business formation on regional development. After a brief sketch of the origins of research on this issue, the main results of different lines of inquiry are discussed. Main issues are the development of start-up cohorts, the relative magnitude of direct and indirect effects, and results by type of entry and by industry, as well ...
2011| Michael Fritsch
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DIW Discussion Papers 1126 / 2011
Under perfect competition on the output market, first best technology subsidies in the presence of learning by doing are justified by knowledge spill overs that are not accounted for by individual companies. First best output subsidies are thus depending directly on the learning effects and are, if applicable, positive. Considering electricity markets, a setting of imperfect competition is more appropriate. ...
2011| Thure Traber, Claudia Kemfert
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DIW Discussion Papers 1125 / 2011
This study investigates the role of gender in financial risk-taking. Specifically, I ask whether female investors tend to fund less risky investment projects than males. To answer this question, I use real-life investment data collected at the largest German market for peer-to-peer lending. Investors' utility is assumed to be a function of the projects expected return and its standard deviation, whereas ...
2011| Nataliya Barasinska
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DIW Discussion Papers 1124 / 2011
In this paper, we examine beta-convergence of real per-capita income of Chinese counties. We account for both the spatial dependences between counties and the possibility of different convergence regimes. The first feature is captured by the spatial error term, whereas the second one is modeled using the spatial logit smooth transition approach. Two groups of counties can be identified: 1) counties, ...
2011| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Eric Girardin
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DIW Discussion Papers 1123 / 2011
In direct contrast to conventional wisdom and most economic models of gender differences in age of marriage, we present robust evidence that men and women who are married to differently-aged spouses are negatively selected. Earnings analysis of married couples in the 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000 Decennial Censuses finds that male earnings decrease with within-couple age difference, regardless of whether ...
2011| Hani Mansour, Terra McKinnish
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DIW Discussion Papers 1122 / 2011
In this paper, the extent of the shadow economy in OECD countries is investigated. The estimates of the size of the shadow economy are obtained using the panel-data techniques applied to the data on 38 OECD member states over the period 1991-2007. Our estimates tend to be somewhat lower than the alternative estimates. However, our and alternative estimates of shadow economy are quite well correlated ...
2011| Konstantin A. Kholodilin, Ulrich Thießen
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DIW Discussion Papers 1121 / 2011
This paper explores the interdependency of political institutions from the voter's perspective. Specifically, we are interested in three questions: (1) Does the partisan identity of the local mayor influence the voter's decision in the subsequent town council election?; (2) Does this partisan identity influence in ensuing higher level elections?; and (3) Do voters condition their vote for the mayor ...
2011| Florian Ade, Ronny Freier
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DIW Discussion Papers 1120 / 2011
This paper highlights the strategic role that private quality standards play in food supply chains. Considering two symmetric retailers that are exclusively supplied by a finite number of producers and endogenizing the producers' delivery choice, we show that there exist two asymmetric equilibria in the retailers' quality requirements. The asymmetry is driven by both the retailers.incentive to raise ...
2011| Vanessa von Schlippenbach, Isabel Teichmann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1119 / 2011
This paper tackles the issue of cross-section dependence for the monetary exchange rate model in the presence of unobserved common factors using panel data from 1973 until 2007 for 19 OECD countries. Applying a principal component analysis we distinguish between common factors and idiosyncratic components and determine whether non-stationarity stems from international or national stochastic trends. ...
2011| Joscha Beckmann, Ansgar Belke, Frauke Dobnik
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DIW Discussion Papers 1118 / 2011
Germany's water supply industry is characterized by a multitude of utilities and widely diverging prices, possibly resulting from structural differences beyond the control of firms' management, but also from inefficiencies. In this article we use Data Envelopment Analysis and Stochastic Frontier Analysis to determine the utilities' technical efficiency scores based on cross-sectional data from 373 ...
2011| Michael Zschille, Matthias Walter
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DIW Discussion Papers 1117 / 2011
Exploiting Tangshan 1976 - the deadliest earthquake in the 20th century - as a source of exogenous variation, we estimate the long-run effect of a historical shock on contemporary socio-economic outcomes. Cohorts born after the earthquake were not only larger, but exhibit lower school completion rates, particularly among the female today. Despite lower schooling levels, there is no evidence for adverse ...
2011| Guo Xu
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DIW Discussion Papers 1116 / 2011
This paper examines several US monthly financial time series data using fractional integration and cointegration techniques. The univariate analysis based on fractional integration aims to determine whether the series are I(1) (in which case markets might be efficient) or alternatively I(d) with d < 1, which implies mean reversion. The multivariate framework exploiting recent developments in fractional ...
2011| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Luis A. Gil-Alana
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DIW Discussion Papers 1115 / 2011
This paper is the first study that analyzes the drivers of political protest using longitudinal data from a critical revolution that changed -at least temporarily- the political landscape in a transition country. We make use of a rich dataset consisting of panel data collected before and after the so called "Orange" revolution in Ukraine. Our empirical approach tackles two different -and equally interesting- ...
2011| Carlos Bozzoli, Tilman Brück
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DIW Discussion Papers 1114 / 2011
By estimating a staggered price model over the period 1980q1-2010q2, this paper documents that, after the euro changeover, Italian retailers have increased the number of price adjustments, which has translated into a higher inflation rate, with a detrimental effect on the competitiveness of the Italian economy.
2011| Guglielmo Maria Caporale, Alessandro Girardi, Marco Ventura
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DIW Discussion Papers 1113 / 2011
This paper systematically investigates whether different kinds of personality characteristics influence entrepreneurial development. On the basis of a large, representative household panel survey, we examine the extent to which the Big Five traits and further personality characteristics, which are more specifically related to entrepreneurial tasks, influence entry into self-employment and survival ...
2011| Marco Caliendo, Frank M. Fossen, Alexander S. Kritikos
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DIW Discussion Papers 1112 / 2011
We use a large micro-dataset to assess the importance of intangible capital - organisation, R&D and ICT capital - for the economic performance of establishments and regions in Germany. In 2003 self-produced intangible capital accounted for more than one fifth of the total capital stock of estab-lishments. More than half of the intangible capital is R&D capital. This high proportion is mainly due to ...
2011| Kurt Geppert, Anne Neumann
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DIW Discussion Papers 1111 / 2011
The very first minimum wage in Germany was introduced in 1997 for blue-collar workers in sub-sectors of the construction industry. In the setting of a natural experiment blue-collar workers in neighboring 4-digit-industries and white-collar workers are used as control groups for differences-in-differences-in-differences estimation based on linked employer-employee data. Estimation results reveal a ...
2011| Pia Rattenhuber
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DIW Discussion Papers 1110 / 2011
Storage devices and demand control may constitute beneficial tools to optimize electricity generation with a large share of intermittent resources through inter-temporal substitution of load. We quantify the related cost reductions in a simulation model of a simplified stylized medium-voltage grid (10kV) under uncertain demand and wind output. Benders Decomposition Method is applied to create a two-stage ...
2011| Andreas Schröder, Jan Siegmeier, Murk Creusen